Case Shiller Home Price Index The annual price change for houses from Oct 2022 to Oct 2023 is 4.8%. Though the monthly price increases are slowing, the annual inflation rate will continue to rise because of the disinflation at the end of 2022. The max benefit of falling prices was Jan 2023, so expect the annual inflation rate for house [...]
Regional Surveys from Philly, NY, Texas and Chicago are all at levels previously indicative of a recession. The lone false signal was the Texas General Business Activity Index in January 2016...the weakness was regionally isolated as the price of oil went from over $100/bbl in 2014 to around $30/bbl by early 2016. No region has absolutely fallen off a cliff, [...]
Note: This will be my last full commentary for 2022. I will spend the month of December on research for next year, visiting with family, and taking some much-needed time off. I will still be watching markets, as will all the other members of the Alhambra team and if something happens which requires me to communicate, I'll certainly do that. [...]
For October 2014, the ISM estimated that its Chicago Business Barometer was a blistering 66.2. Encompassing much of the Midwest and a good deal of auto and parts production, that level seemed to make sense. As any economist would say then, the US economy was on the verge of a breakout and according to the labor statistics maybe even one [...]
The Chicago Business Barometer fell sharply again in February, almost exactly as it had risen sharply in January. In fact, for the past year that has been the dominant pattern of sharp alternating swings between “growth” and “contraction.” Despite that, months showing up below 50 (this is still a PMI) are still somehow “unexpected”: Chicago-area business activity unexpectedly contracted in [...]
While we await a flood of data for December spending and retail activity to confirm what we already suspect by proxy, the updated figures for November going backwards in the production process stand as yet another warning. Retail sales figures were typically abysmal, as were private indications of spending. The Thompson Reuters Same Store Sales Index, a measure of actual [...]
The continued disappointment of economic data is starting to weigh, but only as concerns might be directed toward Q1. Despite all projections for a sharp rebound after January’s dreariness, February figures continue on the downside and now March indications are not much better. The latest is the ISM Chicago Business Barometer (formerly Chicago PMI) which remained in significant contraction for [...]
The last time I commented on the Chicago Business Barometer (formerly the Chicago PMI) it was over a one-month drop that was quickly erased. That violated a personal rule whereby I make every effort to ignore sentiment surveys as they both do not mean what they are taken for and are usually of dubious value. The reason I commented then [...]
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