- by New Deal democrat
Still nerdy after all these years
- by New Deal democrat
- by New Deal democrat
My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha.
Another important indicator - corporate profits - tipped into negative territory this week, as Q1 profits look to be substantially below those of Q4 of last year. On the other hand, real money supply from the Fed has tipped back into positive territory.
As per most of my posts in the past few weeks, the real crux of the matter at present is whether producer and consumer durable goods spending, and consumer spending in general, turn negative. So far they have not.
As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and reward me with a penny or two for my efforts.
- by New Deal democrat
Existing home sales are not that important for forecasting purposes, since they have much less economic impact than new home sales, because the main effect is simply a change in ownership. But there has been an ongoing shortage of housing for over a decade, which was only exacerbated by the pandemic. So I mainly look at this data for evidence of a rebalancing of the market.
Like new home sales, existing home sales have been rangebound for the past 2 years, in reaction to mortgage rates remaining in the 6%-7% range. In February they were near the top of that range at 4.26 million annualized. In March they retreated towards the bottom of that range, at 4.07 million, so the rangebound trend continued:
But as indicated above, the main issue has been a chronic lack of inventory. As shown in the graph below, this trend has been going on for at least 10 years, well predating the pandemic. Unlike sales, this series is not seasonally adjusted, so it must be looked at YoY. In March inventory continued its slow climb from its 2022 Covid lows, at 1.330 million units, a 19.8% increase, and the highest March reading since 2020:
Nevertheless inventory remains well below its pre-2014 levels (not shown), which typically were in the 1.7 million to 1.9 million range, which means that the shortage still exists.
This shortage is still creating upward pricing pressure, but that pressure is abating somewhat. Like prices, this data is not seasonally adjusted and so must be looked at YoY. Here is what the last 10 years look like:
In the immediate aftermath of the pandemic in 2021-22, prices increased as much as 15% or more YoY. After the Fed started its sharp hiking regimen, prices briefly turned negative YoY in early 2023, with a YoY low of -3.0% in May of that year. Thereafter comparisons accelerated almost relentlessly to a YoY peak of 5.8% in May of 2024, before decelerating to 2.9% in September.
Here are the comparisons since:
In March this deceleration continued, with a YoY% gain of 2.7%, the lowest such gain since September 2023.
This is good news, but as indicated above pricing pressures will remain until the shortage of inventory is resolved.
The bottom line is that existing home sales continued the slow rebalancing of the housing market. Next week we will see if the repeat sales indexes buttress this evidence.
- by New Deal democrat
- by New Deal democrat
Jobless claims remained well behaved last week, as they increased 6,000 to 222,000. The four week moving average declined -750 to 220,250. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims declined -37,000 to 1.841 million, at the low end of its range over the past 10 months:
- by New Deal democrat
In ordinary times, new home sales are important because while they are very noisy and heavily revised, they are the most leading of all housing metrics. They remain important even presently because they can tell us about the underlying upward or downward pressure on the economy going forward one year or more.
By way of background, remember that housing responds first and foremost to mortgage rates, and since those have been rangebound generally in the 6% - 7% range for 2.5 years, so have new home sales in the range of 611,000-741,000.
In March, new home sales increased 7.4% from a slightly downwardly revised February, to 724,000 units annualized, continuing the rangebound behavior. As per usual, the below graph compares with with single family permits (red, right scale), which lag slightly but are much less noisy:
Both demonstrate the recent range bound behavior.
Over the same 2.5 year period of time, prices at first stalled, and then began a very slow deflation. This continued last month, as on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the median price of a new single family home declined -7,900 to 403,600, with the exception of last November the lowest price in three years: