Doug Short Advisor Perspectives

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released its U.S. House Price Index (HPI) for November. U.S. house prices were up 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted nominal basis from the previous month. Year-over-year the index is up 4.9% (nonseasonally adjusted). After adjusting for inflation and seasonality, the index is down 0.04% in November and up 3.44% year-over-year (seasonally adjusted).

[unable to retrieve full-text content] This morning's release of the December Existing-Home Sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.54 million units from the previous month's 5.435 million. The Investing.com consensus was for 5.43 million. The latest number represents a 3.6% increase from the previous month and a 10.8% increase year-over-year.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] "Index points to slower economic growth in December." Led by declines in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) fell to –0.35 in December from +0.41 in November. Three of the four broad categories of indicators that make up the index decreased from November, and three of the four categories made negative contributions to the index in December. The index’s three-month moving average,...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Five out of eight indexes on our world watch list posted gains through January 21, 2020. The top performer is our own S&P 500 with a gain of 1.93%. Germany's DAXK is in second with a gain of 1.27% and in third is Tokyo's Nikkei 225  with a gain of 0.88%. Coming in last is Hong Kong's Hang Seng with a loss of -1.96%.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The price of Regular and Premium are down three cents each from last week. According to GasBuddy.com, Hawaii has the highest average price for Regular at $3.61 and Oklahoma has the cheapest at $2.16. The WTIC end of day spot price closed at 58.38, up 0.5% from last week.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The S&P 500 closed the second week of 2020 with another record high, closing at 3329.62. The index is up 3.06% YTD, up 0.39% from Thursday, and up 1.97% from last Friday.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Let's take a closer look at recent activity in US Treasuries. The yield on the 10-year note ended January 17, 2020, at 1.84% the 2-year note ended at 1.28% and the 30-year at 2.29%.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] 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.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] The December Final came in at 99.3, up 2.5 from the November Final reading. Investing.com had forecast 99.2.

[unable to retrieve full-text content] This morning's release of the publicly available data from ECRI puts its Weekly Leading Index (WLI) at 150.6, up 2.0 from the previous week. Year-over-year the four-week moving average of the indicator is now at 4.09%, up from last week. The WLI Growth indicator is now at 4.36, up from the previous week.