Note: The NYSE has released new data for margin debt, now available through May. The latest debt level is down 1.7% month-over-month. The May data gives us an additional sense of recent investor behavior.
Five out of the twelve Federal Reserve Regional Districts currently publish monthly data on regional manufacturing: Dallas, Kansas City, New York, Richmond, and Philadelphia. The average of the five for June is 14.36, down from last month's 16.2. It has been in positive territory for eight consecutive months.
Reports from Fifth District manufacturers improved in June, according to the latest survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. The composite manufacturing index rose from 1 in May to 7 in June, as the indexes for shipments and new orders increased. Investing.com had forecast 4. Because of the highly volatile nature of this index, we include a 3-month moving average to facilitate the identification of trends, now at 9.3, indicates expansion.
With today's release of the April S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we learned that seasonally adjusted home prices for the benchmark 20-city index were up 0.3% month over month. The seasonally adjusted national index year-over-year change has hovered between 4.2% and 5.8% for the last twenty-six months. Today's S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index (Nominal) reached another new high.
The latest Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index was released this morning based on data collected through June 15. The headline number of 118.9 was an increase from the final reading of 117.6 for May, a downward revision from 117.9. Today's number was above the Investing.com consensus of 116.0.
This morning the Dallas Fed released its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey (TMOS) for June. The latest general business activity index came in at 15.0, down slightly from 17.2 in May.
"Index points to slower economic growth in May." This is the headline for today's release of the Chicago Fed's National Activity Index, and here is the opening paragraph from the report: "Led by declines in production-related indicators, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) moved down to –0.26 in May from +0.57 in April."
All eight indexes on our world watch list have posted gains for 2017 through June 26. The top performer thus far is China's Hang Seng with a gain of 17.60%, followed by India's BSE SENSEX not far behind at 16.94%. In third is our own S&P 500 with 8.94%.
The latest new orders number at -1.1% month-over-month (MoM) was worse than the Investing.com consensus of -0.6%. The series is up 2.7% year-over-year (YoY). If we exclude transportation, "core" durable goods came in at 0.1% MoM, which was below the Investing.com consensus of 0.5%. The core measure is up 5.5% YoY.
The Chicago Fed's National Activity Index, which we reported on this morning, is based on 85 economic indicators drawn from four broad categories of data:
