COVID-19: Coronavirus Coverage

With this morning's release of the November S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we learned that seasonally adjusted home prices for the benchmark 20-city index saw a 0.5% decrease month over month. The MoM is reduced to -1.2% after adjusting for inflation. The non-seasonally adjusted national index saw a 7.7% YoY increase.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has released its U.S. house price index (HPI) for November. U.S. house prices decreased by 0.1% from the previous month. Year-over-year the index is up 8.2% on a non-seasonally adjusted nominal basis. After adjusting for inflation and seasonality, the index is was unchanged in November and up 1% year-over-year (seasonally adjusted).

Seven of eight indexes on our world watch list posted gains through January 30, 2023. The top performer continues to be Hong Kong's Hang Seng with a YTD gain of 11.57%. France's CAC 40 is in second with a YTD gain of 9.40%, and Germany's DAXK remains in third with a YTD gain of 8.64%. Coming in last for the fourth straight week is India's BSE SENEX with a loss of 2.20% YTD.

The Dallas Fed released its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey (TMOS) for January. The latest general business activity index came in at -8.4, up 11.6 from last month. All figures are seasonally adjusted.

Personal income (excluding transfer receipts) in December rose 0.27% and is up 5.3% year-over-year. However, when adjusted for inflation using the BEA's PCE Price Index, real personal income (excluding transfer receipts) MoM was up 0.21% and was up 0.3% year-over-year.

With the release of Friday morning's report on December's personal incomes and outlays, we can now take a closer look at "real" disposable personal income per capita. At two decimal places, the nominal 0.22% month-over-month change in disposable income comes to 0.17% when we adjust for inflation. This is a decrease from last month's .28% nominal and 0.18% real change. The year-over-year metrics are 2.71% nominal and -2.20% real.

The National Association of Realtors released the December data for its pending home sales index. According to the National Association of Realtors®, "Pending home sales increased in December for the first time since May 2022 — following six consecutive months of declines."

The accompanying chart is a way to visualize real GDP change since 2007 and uses stacked column chart to segment the four major components of GDP with a dashed line overlay to show the sum of the four, which is real GDP itself. Here is the latest overview from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The advance estimate for Q4 GDP, to one decimal, came in at 2.9% (2.89% to two decimal places), a decrease from 3.2% (3.24% to two decimal places) for the Q3 third estimate. With a per-capita adjustment, the headline number is lower at 2.52% to two decimal points.

The latest index came in at -1, up 3 from last month's revised figured, indicated a slower pace of decline compared to December. The future outlook declined to 3. All figures are seasonally adjusted. Here is a snapshot of the complete Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Survey.

This morning's release of the December new home sales from the Census Bureau came in at 616K, up 2.3% month-over-month from a revised 602K in November. The Investing.com forecast was for 617K. The median home price is now at $442K.

I've updated this series to include the December release of the consumer price index as the deflator and the monthly employment update. The latest hypothetical real (inflation-adjusted) annual earnings are at $47,438, down 8.6% from 45-plus years ago. Hourly earnings are below their all-time high after adjusting for inflation.

This morning's release of the December existing home sales showed that sales fell slightly to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.02 million units from the previous month's 4.08 million. The Investing.com consensus was for 3.96 million. The latest number represents a 1.5% decrease from the previous month and its eleventh in a row. December saw a 34.0% decrease YoY.

The latest manufacturing index came in at -8.9, up 4.8 from last month's -13.7, marking the index's fifth negative reading in a row and the seventh in the last eight months. The three-month moving average came in at -12.7, down from last month. The six-month outlook came in at 4.9, up from the previous month's -0.9. Since this is a diffusion index, negative readings indicate contraction, positive ones indicate expansion.

Month-over-month nominal sales in November was down 1.15% and up 6.02% YoY. Real retail sales, calculated with the seasonally adjusted CPI, decreased by 1.07% and was down 0.38% YoY.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Housing Market Index (HMI) is a gauge of builder opinion on the relative level of current and future single-family home sales. It is a diffusion index, which means that a reading above 50 indicates a favorable outlook on home sales; below 50 indicates a negative outlook. The latest reading of 35 is up 4 from last month's 31, ending 12 consecutive monthly declines.

The Census Bureau's Advance Retail Sales Report for December was released this morning. Headline sales came in at -1.15% month-over-month and was below the Investing.com forecast of -0.8%. Core sales (ex Autos) came in at -1.13% MoM.

This morning's release of the December Producer Price Index (PPI) for Finished Goods was down 1.5% month-over-month seasonally adjusted, down from a 0.2% increase last month. It is at 8.8% year-over-year, down from a 10.6% increase last month, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

This morning we got the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The diffusion index for General Business Conditions at -32.9 was a decrease of 21.7 from the previous month's -11.2. This was the index's lowest reading since May 2020 and the fifth worst reading in survey history. The Investing.com forecast was for a reading of -8.7.

Let's do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best-known measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U.

We are now seeing some of the highest inflation rates since the second of the two recessions in the early 1980s. Here is a table showing the annualized change in Headline and Core CPI, not seasonally adjusted, for each of the past six months.

The latest full set UIG for November is 5.37% while the prices-only measure is 4.53%. Current Headline CPI is now 6.45% and Core CPI is 5.71%.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the December Consumer Price Index data this morning. The year-over-year non-seasonally adjusted Headline CPI came in at 6.45%, down from 7.11% the previous month. Year-over-year Core CPI (ex Food and Energy) came in at 5.71%, down from 5.96% the previous month.

We've updated our monthly workforce analysis to include the latest Employment Report for December. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, and the number of new nonfarm jobs (a relatively volatile number subject to extensive revisions) came in at 223K.

The headline number for December came in at 89.8, down 2.1 from the previous month. The index is at the 7th percentile in this series.

Let's take a closer look at this week's employment report numbers on Full and Part-Time Employment.

The latest monthly employment report showed a gain of 223K nonfarm jobs, which consists of a gain of 183K service-providing jobs and a gain of 40K goods-producing jobs.

In response to a standing request, here is an updated comparison of four major secular bear markets. The numbers are through the December 30, 2022 close.

The U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, also known as the FT-900, is published monthly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis with data going back to 1992 and details U.S. exports and imports of goods and services. The headline number of -$61.5B was better than the -73.0B Investing.com forecast.

"Travel on all roads and streets changed by +0.1% (+0.3 billion vehicle miles) for October 2022 as compared with October 2021. Travel for the month is estimated to be 286.0 billion vehicle miles." The 12-month moving average was mostly unchanged month-over-month and up 3.0% year-over-year. If we factor in population growth, the 12-month MA of the civilian population-adjusted data (age 16-and-over) inched down 0.1% month-over-month and was up 2% year-over-year.