– by New Deal democrat I concluded last month’s post on construction spending by writing “Putting this report together with this morning’s other report on manufacturing from ISM, it appears the goods-producing part of the economy as a whole is very slightly contracting. It will be interesting to see if this is reflected in a decline […]
– by New Deal democrat As usual, we start out the month with reports on both manufacturing and construction. Ill post separately on construction. Additionally, the May JOLTS reports was posted, but I’ll discuss that tomorrow. So let’s start with the ISM manufacturing report, a recognized leading indicator for the past 60+ years, although of diminished […]
– by New Deal democrat This week data arrives in two batches: a smaller batch (ISM manufacturing and construction spending) tomorrow, and a huge tranche (nonfarm payrolls, jobless claims, ISM services, and factory orders) on Thursday. Which means I might take Wednesday off, and/or delay reporting on some of Thursday’s data until Friday. In the meantime, […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. There have been a number of reversals since April, most notably the stock market going from a 12 month low to a new all-time high, but also the front-running by consumers apparent in the weekly Redbook report has also reversed, from over 7% […]
– by New Deal democrat The last significant data for the first half of 2025, personal income and spending for May, was released this morning. It was the first month that reflected the impact of Tariff-palooza!, and boy howdy was it impacted. Not a single metric was positive. One metric was unchanged; everything else was negative. […]
– by New Deal democrat Jobless claims continue to tell us two things: (1) the jobs market continues to slowly weaken, but (2) it is not recessionary. This week I’ve changed my graphing scheme slightly, to emphasize the less noisy four week moving average of initial claims, to better show the residual post-COVID seasonality, and to […]
– by New Deal democrat This morning gives us the last of our three measures of home sales, prices, and inventory, new home sales. These are the most important of the three because while they are very noisy and heavily revised, they are the most leading of all housing metrics, and so they can tell us about […]
– by New Deal democrat Yesterday the existing home sales report showed continued deceleration in YoY price increases to 1.3%, along with an increase in inventory of houses for sale, indicative of the ongoing rebalancing of the housing market. This morning’s repeat home sales reports from the FHFA and S&P Case Shiller strongly confirmed that deceleration and ongoing […]
– by New Deal democrat The first part of this week is all about more housing data. This morning started out with existing home sales, which although they typically constitute about 90% of all sales are the least important for forecasting purposes, since the main thing that happens is only a change in ownership, and therefore they […]
– by New Deal democrat There is an old saying that “economic expansions don’t die of old age. They are murdered.” I have been writing about the economy, and examining all sorts of leading, coincident, and lagging indicators, for 20 years; and the longer time goes on, the truer that saying appears. My most recent examination […]