Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Back From Fall Vacation


9 comments:

Firemane said...

Welcome back, Dawg!

After about a thousand data points all pointing at the Trump economy continuing to surge forward, this morning CR has pretty much the first data I've seen to even hint that things might be turning.

https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/10/new-home-sales-decrease-sharply-to.html

BIG drop in New Home Sales in September. Big enough that months of supply spiked from 6 months to 7 months. My first guess is that this is likely inflated some due to Florence ... though we didn't see this kind of spike last year with Harvey. Could be 30-year mortgage rates hitting 5% in some places has become a psychological barrier (over and above the actual financial barrier).

At the moment, it's more an outlier than anything else, but another 2-3 months of cooling in new homes could really rob the economy of the nice tail wind housing has been providing the last several years.


LBD said...

As interest rates go up then comes the period of stall before moving up or down. My money is on down and then does the failure rate of mortgages pick up? If your money becomes negative then the weak bail. IMO.

Lawyerliz said...

Will unemployment be up or down in October? Will wages be noticeably higher than inflation?

Rob Dawg said...

That BIG drop in New Home sales comes on top of a very large previous months' revision. Double bad.

Delinquency rates are going up in direct opposition to general economic trends. Very worrisome. We will talk about this.

U-3 doesn't work anymore. It's broken. I'm sure it is accurate. I'm equally sure it doesn't have the value it once held. I'm switching to U-6 with the litany of cautions Firemane and I have highlighted for more than a decade. In the cases where Firemane and I disagree the smart money should go with he of the Crimson Coiffure.

And to stir the pot. Inflation. Been bad even through the Great Recession but what we see now is the kinds of inflation the statistics cannot ignore.

So. trip summary. Into Boston, car rental. 5 on the Cape in Chatham, visiting Nantucket and P-town. Dropped traveling companions in Boston (they went to Italy). 2 in the Berkshires. Left the car in Beantown and 3 days in the city. Amtrak to NYC. 4 nights 2 hotels then return out of Newark. Cool stuff every moment.

LBD said...

Ah, vacations. Still savoring ours and back to simple eating tastes good after all the food on our trip.

TJandTheBear said...

Welcome back!
--
Things always look their best right before the fall... and now it's fall.

Beware, Winter is Coming!

Rob Dawg said...

Looking back over the past 12 months. Scotland, Hawaii, Colorado, Las Vegas and now the Northeast. No tuition is a good thing.

Rob Dawg said...

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