Existing Home Sales --- 05/27/2009

Buyers of homes are coming back into the market place, so says the Existing Home Sales report. We saw an increase of 2.9% in sales for April verses March. What the report says to me is that people are taking advantage of the lower prices in the housing market.

The reported numbers goes as follows:
Actual- 4.68M
Market Expects- 4.66M
Prior- 4.55M

S&P Case-Shiller Index Tumbles- A Perspective

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller National Home Price index came out today and it was reported that home prices fell by 19.1 percent in the first quarter.

Be very carefull here! Stablization of prices in the housing market is key in order to for the economy to get back on track to recovery. And at this point, we do not see any stablization here. However, existing home sales report tomorrow and which should give some indication if people are taking advantage of these lower prices.

Consumer Confidence 05/26/2009

Consumer confidence numbers came out today with the highest number in 8 months (september of 2008) with a level of 54.9 verse the prior number of 40.8 and a market expectation of 42.6.

Economic News Week in Review w/e- 5/21/2009

Monday May 19th, building permits and housing starts came out with numbers lower that what the market expected. Building permits posting a 494k verses a market expected number of 530k and housing starts posted a 458k verses a market expected number of 520k.

Wednesday, May 20th, Crude Oil inventories came out lower than expected posting -2.10M barrels verses -4.63M from the prior period.

Thursday, May 21, Initial Jobless claims did better than prior period but less than what the market expected with an actual number of 631k with a market expectation of 625k and a prior period number of 643k.

Next week, should be an interesting week with consumer confidence, existing home sales, new home sales,GDP prelim, GDP deflat, Chicago PMI and Mich Sent-Rev.

May 1st- Economic News

Today the Michican Consumer Sentiment came out today with good numbers: 65.1 for April from 61.9 for March with the market expectation of 61.9.

Factory Orders came down again from 0.7 prior to -0.9.

ISM Index did better than expected 36.3 prior to 40.1

April 30- Economic News

Good news from the Initial Claims report where Initial Claims fell from 645k prior period to 631k current period with the expectation of 640k.

Personal Spending dropped to -0.2% from prior period number of 0.4%

Personal Income dropped to -0.3 from prior period number of -0.2%

Chicago PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) rose to 40.1 from 31.4

Employment Cost Index dropped to 0.3% from prior levels of 0.6

Crude Inventories

Crude inventories were larger than expected due to falling demand of oil. 3857k of crude prior period verses 4053k today's level.

Read the story here at Yahoo! Finance.

1st Quarter GDP

GDP for the first quarter came out this morning with the economy contracting -6.1% verses the -4.7% the market was expecting and -6.3% the prior quarter.

Read the entire story here at Yahoo! Finance.

Consumer Confidence for April- Better Than Expected

The Consumer Confidence report came out this morning with better than expected numbers with a 12 point jump verses the prior month of 26.9 (revised number for March) to 39.2.

Read the entire story here at Yahoo! Finance.

Consumer Confidence

On tuesday, April 28th, Consumer Confidence reports at the early morning for the month of April. The market expects 28.8; prior number was 26.0.

Consumer Confidence is a monthly survey of 5000 households which give indication of buying patterns and a mild indication of economic health.

Economic Calendar of Week Ending 05/01/2009

This weeks economic calendar for weekending 05/01/2009 has some important indicators being released this week.

You can check out the economic calendar for weekending 05/01/2009 here at Yahoo! Finance.