Purchase Applications up week/week but down year/year.
MBA Mortgage Applications (week ended 4/4/2014)
– Purchase Index Week/Week +3.0%. Previous weeks were +1.0%, +3.0%, -1.0%, -1.0%, +9.0%, -4.0%, -6.0%, -5.0%, -4.0%, +2.0%, -4.0%, and +12.0%.
– Refinance Index Week/Week -5.0%. Previous weeks were -3.0%, -8.0%, -1.0%, -3.0%, +10.0%, -11.0%, -3.0%, -0.2%, +3.0%, -2.0%, and +10.0%.
– Composite Index Week/Week -1.6%. Previous weeks were -1.2%, -3.5%, -1.2%, -2.1%, +9.4%, -8.5%, -4.1%, -0.2%, +0.4%, -0.2%, and +4.7%.
Year-on-year Purchase Applications are down 14%.
Wholesale Trade (February 2014)
– Inventories month/month +0.5%. Previous was +0.8%.
Changes in inventories should forecast changes in sales as well as reflect the discrepancy between previous inventory grown and previous sales. This is a component of GDP. The most important piece in GDP data is Final sales of Domestic Products. Real Final Sales of Domestic Products was +2.66% in 4thQ2013. That is the best since 1stQ2012.