THE BASIS POINT

Pending Home Sales 2yr High. Jobless Claims Higher Than Expected 5th Week.

 

Initial Jobless Claims
– 388,000 for week ended April 21, seasonally adjusted

– Down 1,000 from previous week’s revised 389,000 (was 386k)

– This was the fifth straight week jobless claims were higher than expected

– 4-week moving average (also seasonally adjusted) was 381,750, up 6,250 from previous week

– 4-week average is at highest level of the year

– Charts from Besoke’s full report are below

-What we may be seeing this year with the warm winter in most of the country may be much about the effect of the historical seasonal adjustments being inconsistent with the actual weather as it is about the true state of the jobs market.

Pending Home Sales (March 2012)
– Pending Sales of Existing Homes level rose 101.4

– Up 4.1% month/month, up 12.8% year/year

– This is an NAR index in which level of 100 is considered healthy

– It shows new contracts on existing houses and condos expected to close within 60 days

– March is the highest level since hitting 111.3 in April 2010

Full report from NAR

– This data is from NAR, the folks who overestimated home sales data for 2007-2010

Chicago Fed National Activity Index (March 2012)
– Index Level -0.29

-This is another supply side indicator showing that the wholesale side got ahead of the retail side and applied the brakes.

 

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