Homeownership Rate - Relatively Poor MBA Applications Before getting into the Homeownership Rate, let's review the MBA Appplications. MBA applications index in the week of May 17th increased 2.4% weekly which was up from the 0.6% decline last week. Unfortunately, this strength was all about the refi
Stocks Rally - President Trump Lifts Tariffs On Canada Mexico Before getting into what caused the stocks rally, let's review what's going on in the trade war. In a tweet on Sunday, President Trump stated he would be lifting the steel and aluminum tariffs of 25% and 10% on Canada and Mexico. In turn,
Tariffs Hurt Retail Sales - Redbook Sales Growth Falls Before getting into how tariffs hurt retail sales, let's review Redbook. Every Redbook same store sales growth report is interesting for a different reason. Latest result is interesting because it includes how the consumer reacted to new tariffs
Semiconductors - Trade War Worries Continue Semiconductors -The tech sector underperformed on Monday because of the fallout from the Commerce Department putting Huawei on its entity list. That prevents Huawei from buying American made parts and components. Blacklisting Huawei will have such a severe
U.S. Economy - What Caused The Consumer’s Uncertainty? U.S. Economy and Consumer Uncertainty reach an impasse. Preliminary May consumer sentiment reading and the expectations index hit a 15 year high. Both will likely come down when the final reading is released because of the newly implemented tari
Trade Fears - Stocks Decline Friday Trade Fears - The stock market had no business increasing on Friday since the latest news on trade is China isn’t ready to negotiate with America. That’s not a big surprise because they wanted to change what was already agreed upon and Trump held firm. Stalled tra
Leading Indicators - ECRI Leading Growth Falls Leading Indicators - This Friday was the one time per month we get an update on both the ECRI leading index and the Conference Board leading index. To be clear, the ECRI leading index is weekly and the Conference Board index comes out with data on the p
Jobless Claims Decrease - Another Rally On Thursday Jobless Claims Decrease - This has been a solid 3 day run for stocks as the S P 500 is up 2.65% since the low on Monday afternoon. Because the correction wasn’t large to begin with, the market is close to recovering its losses. I don’t think the st
Housing Market Index - MBA Mortgage Applications Housing Market Index - In the week of May 10th, the MBA applications index fell 0.6% from last week after increasing 2.7%. The purchase applications index fell 1% after increasing 4%. Yearly growth was 7.7%. In April, purchase applications for newly b
