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The latest index came in at 4, down from 5 last month, which indicates that activity expanded in April. The future outlook increased to 12 from 11 last month. Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey. New seasonal adjustment factors were incorporated, which adjusted historical indexes and will be used moving forward.
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This morning’s release of the April New Home Sales from the Census Bureau came in at 673K, down 6.9% month-over-month from a revised 723K in March.
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This morning’s seasonally adjusted 211K new claims, down 16 from the previous week, was better than the Investing.com forecast of 215K.
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Here’s the latest on the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple.
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The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index, which we reported on this morning, is based on 85 economic indicators drawn from four broad categories of data:
Production and Income
Employment, Unemployment, and Hours
Personal Consumption and Housing
Sales, Orders, and Inventories
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"Index points to slower economic growth in April." Led by declines in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) fell to –0.45 in April from +0.05 in March. Three of the four broad categories of indicators that make up the index decreased from March, and two of the four categories made negative contributions to the index in April. The index’s three-month moving average, CFNAI-MA3, moved down to –0.32 in April from –0.24 in March.
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The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) monthly data on volume sales is several weeks old when it released. The latest numbers, through mid-March, are now available.
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This morning’s release of the April Existing-Home Sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.19 million units from the previous month’s 5.21M. The Investing.com consensus was for 5.35 million. The latest number represents an 0.4% decrease from the previous month and a 4.4% decrease year-over-year.
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All eight indexes on our world watch list posted gains through May 20, 2019. The top performer is China’s Shanghai SSE with a 16.44% gain and in second is France’s CAC 40 with a gain of 14.27%. In third is our own S&P 500 with a gain of 13.16%. Coming in last is Tokyo’s Nikkei with a gain of 6.43%.
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The price of Regular and Premium are down a penny each from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, California has the highest average price for Regular at $4.02 and Louisiana has the cheapest at $2.42. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 63.21, a 3.6% increase from this time last week and a 30% increase since the beginning of the year.
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Let’s take a closer look at recent activity in US Treasuries. The yield on the 10-year note ended May 17, 2019, at 2.39% and the 30-year mortgage rate is at 4.07%.
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The markets reacted to trade tariff news this week, falling to bring YTD gains to 14%. The index closed the week down 0.58% from Thursday and down 0.76% from last Friday.
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This morning’s release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 146.7, down 0.2 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at -1.84%, down from last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at 0.25, also down from the previous week.
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The May Preliminary came in at 102.4, up 5.2 from the April Final reading. Investing.com had forecast 97.8.
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The latest Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for April increased to 112.1 from 111.9 in March.
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Over the long haul the two series offer a compelling study of trends in residential real estate. Here is an overlay of the two series since the 1959 inception of the Starts data and the Permits data, which began being tracked a year later.
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The Weekly Leading Economic Index (WLEI) uses fifty different time series from these categories: Corporate Bond Composite, Treasury Bond Composite, Stock Market Composite, Labor Market Composite, Credit Market Composite.
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Note: With the release of April Retail Sales and Consumer Price Index, we’ve updated this commentary to include the latest Real Retail Sales. Month-over-month nominal sales in April decreased by 0.2% (0.19% to two decimals). Real Retail Sales, calculated with the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index, decreased by 0.51%.
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We’ve updated this series to include the April release of the Consumer Price Index as the deflator and the April monthly employment update. The latest hypothetical real (inflation-adjusted) annual earnings are at $39,277, down 11.5% from 45-plus years ago.
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The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for April new residential building permits. The latest reading of 1.296M was a slight increase from 1.288M in March and fractionally below the Investing.com forecast of 1.290M.
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The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for April new residential housing starts. The latest reading of 1.235M was slightly below the Investing.com forecast of 1.205M and an increase from the previous month’s revised 1.168M.
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This morning’s seasonally adjusted 212K new claims, down 16K from the previous week, was better than the Investing.com forecast of 220K.
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The latest Manufacturing Index came in at 16.6, up 5.2 from last month’s 13.7. The 3-month moving average came in at 6.0, up from 8.1 last month. Since this is a diffusion index, negative readings indicate contraction, positive ones indicate expansion. The Six-Month Outlook came in at 19.7, up 0.6 from the previous month’s 19.1.
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Here’s the latest on the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple.
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The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Housing Market Index (HMI) is a gauge of builder opinion on the relative level of current and future single-family home sales. It is a diffusion index, which means that a reading above 50 indicates a favorable outlook on home sales; below 50 indicates a negative outlook. The latest reading of 66 is up 3 from last month.
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Today’s report on Industrial Production for April shows a 0.5% decrease month-over-month, which was worse than the Investing.com consensus of 0.0%. The year-over-year change is 0.87%, down from last month’s YoY increase.
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The Census Bureau’s Advance Retail Sales Report for April was released this morning. Headline sales came in at -.019% month-over-month to one decimal and was worse than the Investing.com forecast of 0.2%. Core sales (ex Autos) came in at 0.05% MoM (to two decimals).
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This morning we got the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The diffusion index for General Business Conditions at 17.80 was an increase of 7.7 from the previous month’s 10.10. The Investing.com forecast was for a reading of 8.20.
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The headline number for April came in at 103.5, up 1.7 from the previous month. The index is at the 88th percentile in this series. Today’s number came in above the Investing.com forecast of 102.3.
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The price of Regular and Premium are up three and two cents, respectively, from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, California has the highest average price for Regular at $4.05 and Louisiana has the cheapest at $2.45. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 61.04, a 1.9% decrease from this time last week and a 28% increase since the beginning of the year.
