From the monthly archives:
The latest existing home sales figures hit the tape today. Here’s what they showed:
* Existing home sales jumped 7.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.54 million in November. That was up from 6.09 million a month earlier and well above forecasts for a reading of 6.25 million.
* Regionally, sales were strong across the [...]
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The Federal Open Market Committee just concluded its policy meeting. As expected, interest rates were left unchanged in a range of 0% to 0.25%. The Fed reiterated that several special support programs for commercial paper, primary dealers, and other constituencies will end on February 1, 2010. The Fed will continue to buy mortgage backed securities [...]
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Housing starts and permits data for November were released this morning. Here’s a recap of the numbers:
* Overall housing starts rose 8.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 574,000 in November from 527,000 in October. That was exactly in line with the forecast of economists. Permitting activity gained 6% to 584,000 from 551,000. That [...]
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The National Association of Home Builders released its latest builder sentiment index this afternoon. A look at the numbers follows:
* The overall index registered 16 in December. That was down from November’s reading of 17 and below the 18 that economists were expecting.
* Among the sub-indices, the one measuring present single family sales slipped to [...]
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Readers, you should be aware that the 30-year Treasury Bond auction today stunk up the joint. $13 billion in 30s were auctioned off at yield of 4.52%, 4 basis points worse than pre-auction talk.
Despite the recent rise in yields, demand was relatively punk, too — with indirect bidding falling to 40.2% from 44% in the prior month’s auction. [...]
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This chart shows the progression of the net gain/loss of jobs in the U.S. economy. You can see how the recent downturn was much deeper than the one we saw in the 2001 recession. You can also see the blatantly obvious, multi-month improvement in the figures. While we’re still losing jobs, we’re losing fewer and fewer [...]
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It’s been a long time since we’ve had encouraging news on the jobs front. But boy did we get it this morning. The details:
* Employment fell by a paltry 11,000 in the month of November. That was much better than the expectation for a drop of 125,000. October’s -190k reading was also revised up to [...]
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The latest Beige Book report on the state of the economy was just released by the Fed. The summary suggests we’re seeing more stability and/or gradual improvement in the economy:
“Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts indicate that economic conditions have generally improved modestly since the last report. Eight Districts indicated some pickup in activity [...]
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The National Association of Realtors just released data on pending home sales for October. A recap:
* Pending home sales rose 3.7%. That was much better than the 1% decline that economists were expecting.
* On a year-over-year basis, the pending sales index soared 31.8% to 114.1 from 86.6. That is the biggest annual increase on record [...]
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