US The December existing home sales print rose a solid 3.6% to a 5.54 million-unit pace as the housing market renaissance continues. Lower mortgage rates have brought buyers back into the market, particularly in the South and West, where population and employment growth remain the strongest. The rebound in existing home sales follows a string [...]
US The first major economic indicator to hit the wire in 2020 was the ISM manufacturing report, which showed the fastest pace of contraction since the height of the 2008 recession. So when the ISM non-manufacturing report was published earlier last week, financial markets were relieved to see that barometer of the service sector rise [...]
US The first major economic indicator to hit the wire in 2020 was the ISM manufacturing report, which showed the fastest pace of contraction since the height of the 2008 recession. When the ISM non-manufacturing report was published earlier last week, financial markets were relieved to see that barometer of the service sector rise to [...]
US President Trump became the third president in US history to be impeached, after the House voted 230-197 and 229-198 along strictly partisan lines to charge him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Despite the historic nature of the vote, there was negligible reaction from financial markets. Trump joins Bill Clinton (1998) and [...]
US An agreement between the White House and Democrats in the House of Representatives was reached this week paving the way for passage of the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, a reworking of the nearly three-decade-old NAFTA accord. Officials from the three countries met in Mexico last week to approve revisions to the agreement, which is set [...]
US Hiring came roaring back in November, as employers added a whopping 266K net new jobs. Employers also hired more workers in October than previously thought with the revised data showing a gain of 156K, up from 128K previously estimated. The unemployment rate ticked back down to its 50-year low of 3.5%. Manufacturing employment rebounded [...]
US As the Thanksgiving holiday compressed the economic indicator schedule into the first half of the week, market attention remained squarely focused on the data performance in order to gauge the overall health of the US economy during the final months of 2019. With regards to the consumer, the landscape remains largely positive. Consumer confidence, [...]
US Minutes from the October FOMC meeting indicated the Fed is content to remain on the sidelines for the rest of this year as the looser financial conditions resulting from rate cuts at three consecutive meetings feed through to the economy. Committee members judged the current stance of monetary policy as “appropriate”, while recognizing that [...]
US Reverberations of slowing global growth and trade uncertainty have been most acutely felt in the factory sector, given newly imposed tariffs on a wide array of producer inputs and globally integrated supply chains. The weakness was on full display in October, as manufacturing production slipped 0.6%, the second straight monthly decline. Adding to their [...]
US The ISM non-manufacturing index, a measure of the breadth of activity in the US service sector, beat expectations last week by climbing to 54.7 from a three-year low of 52.6 last month. The multiyear low of the non-man survey was especially concerning last month because it came just two days after its manufacturing counterpart [...]
