Headlines today across the financial news sources highlighted the number of foreclosures increasing as banks clear delinquent accounts and the number of households now shifting over to renting over owning their homes. Our focus here is not on the trend of renting – but on the impact of growing rental business on the business community [...]
US retail sales for January were a bit lower than expected – rising only .4%. Analysts had expected retail sales to increase by .7% in the month. Some of this could have been because of a lack of cold winter weather. Whereas winter blasts can slow retail sales in the fall peak shopping season (keeping [...]
The initial claims for unemployment benefits has fallen to a level that is generally perceived to mean sustained growth is now possible. It is pretty obvious but bears repeating that until the new layoffs end it is pretty hard to gain ground on unemployment as every set of job gains have to take into consideration [...]
One component of the business inventory report that we tend to watch closely is the St. Louis Fed’s Business Inventory to Sales Ratio. Largely as expected, businesses let inventories fall slightly in December (highly predictable); the index came in at 1.26 after being fixed at 1.27 from August through November of 2011. As you look [...]
It was a disappointing turn of events, but housing delinquencies inched up again in the fourth quarter of 2011, the second strait quarter of increases. The number of delinquencies hit 6.01% in Q4, well off of the rate of 6.41% from last year – but it is trending in a negative direction quarter-over-quarter – not [...]
The Producer Price Index (a measure of business inflationary pressure) eased just slightly in December, continuing a trend that we have seen since September. The PPI for all commodities fell to 200.2 (indexed to the year 1982), after hitting 203.7 in September. If you look at the modified St. Louis Fed chart at right, you [...]
One component of the business inventory report that we tend to watch closely is the St. Louis Fed’s Business Inventory to Sales Ratio. Largely as expected, businesses let inventories fall slightly in December (highly predictable); the index came in at 1.26 after being fixed at 1.27 from August through [This content is for MEMBERS ONLY. [...]
It was a disappointing turn of events, but housing delinquencies inched up again in the fourth quarter of 2011, the second strait quarter of increases. The number of delinquencies hit 6.01% in Q4, well off of the rate of 6.41% from last year – but it is trending in a negative direction quarter-over-quarter – not [...]
US retail sales for January were a bit lower than expected – rising only .4%. Analysts had expected retail sales to increase by .7% in the month. Some of this could have been because of a lack of cold winter weather. Whereas winter blasts can slow retail sales in the fall peak shopping season (keeping [...]
Those of us that have been in business for forty years or more can sometimes claim to have a “gut feeling” on events. Today’s weekly unemployment report caught some headlines because the number of jobless claims fell by about 15,000 for the week. That’s great and we should feel pretty good about it – and [...]
