Long leading indicators update: corporate profits in Q4 2024  – by New Deal democrat Corporate profits are a long leading indicator, as they typically turn down at least one year before the onset of a recession. Unfortunately, they are typically reported with a lag, and Q4 corporate profits aren’t reported officially until the final update […]

 – by New Deal democrat This week’s look at initial jobless claims includes seasonal revisions made to the data for the last five years. Fortunately, they appear to be very minor. So let’s take our typical look. On a weekly basis, initial claims declined -1,000 to 224,000, and the four week moving average declined -4,750 to […]

 – by New Deal democrat Last week I explored how past episodes of sharp increases in politic uncertainty, and decreases in consumer confidence, had played out in the hard data as to both production and consumption. The upshot was that consumers tended to react first, with about a one quarter delay, and producers tended to […]

The housing market continues its slow rebalancing: new and existing home sales rangebound, price pressures including Case Shiller and FHFA steady  – by New Deal democrat Since new home sales as well as the repeat sales price indexes were both reported this morning, let’s update the entire housing market all at once, including existing home sales, […]

A “quick and dirty” update: the employment is historically very weak  – by New Deal democrat There’s no significant economic reports today, and even most of the high frequency indicators won’t start coming in for the week until tomorrow, so let me go a little more in depth in what the “quick and dirty” forecasting model […]

 – by New Deal democrat No significant new economic news today, so let me follow up on Wednesday’s post about production and sales. The high frequency indicator I follow on the manufacturing side is the new orders components of the manufacturing indexes published each month by five of the regional Feds. As I wrote Wednesday, these […]

 – by New Deal democrat Let’s take our weekly look at initial claims, the first indicator that should show stress in any rising unemployment scenario. Last week initial jobless claims rose 2,000 to 223,000, and the four week average rose 750 to 227,000. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims rose 33,000 to 1.892 million: […]

Policy uncertainty, business investment, and consumer spending  – by New Deal democrat There’s no significant new economic news today, so let’s take a look at something of a topic du jour. In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, “economic policy uncertainty” has spiked to a level never seen before aside from the moment the pandemic […]

Two cheers for a great February industrial production report! With a gigantic *  – by New Deal democrat Two cheers for the very good industrial production report for Feburary! Total production increased 0.7%, and manufacturing production increased 0.9% to the highest level in over two years: But the biggest news is that the headline number wasn’t […]

February housing construction rangebound, but at recessionary or near-recessionary levels  – by New Deal democrat As usual, the month’s important housing data starts out with construction.  For a quick refresher, I follow this because housing typically leads the rest of the economy by a year or more. After the very leading, but very noisy and […]