Fundamentals 7/27: Durable Goods & Loan Apps Down

MBA Mortgage Applications (week ending 7/22)
-Purchase Index Week/Week: -3.8%
-Refinance Index Week/Week: -5.5%
-Composite Index Week/Week: -5.0%
-Refi apps fell to 69.6% of total apps from 70.1% the previous week
-The Purchase Index indicates that July home sales are likely to be weak
-Four-week moving average for all apps was down 0.3%

Durable Goods Orders (June)
-New Orders Month/Month: -2.1%, down 2 of last 3 months
-New Orders Year/Year: +7.6 %
-Ex-transportation Month/Month: +0.1%
-Ex-transportation Year/Year: +7.1%
-3yr chart below: line is the Year/Year and grey bars are month/month

-What this says is that the production side was more optimistic than the consumer side and needs to adjust to diminished consumer demand. In a sense, this is a capsule of the U.S. economic picture – there is a ton of capital and business is perfectly willing to deploy it with no incentive except profit but unless the consumer wants whatever business is selling economic growth will remain weak.