Home Sales Clobbered by Mortgage Rates. New Listings & Active Listings Surge. Most Price Reductions for any March in Years by Wolf Richter • Apr 18, 2024 • 119 Comments Price reductions of existing homes jump to 31.7% of active listings, highest since 2017.
Mortgage Rates over 7% and Heading Higher, Housing Market Still Frozen, Lots of Buyers on Strike as Prices Still Too High by Wolf Richter • Apr 17, 2024 • 172 Comments All that makes sense, but why are there still any cash-out refis when people could take cash out via HELOCs, without losing a 3% mortgage?
Yen Drops to 155 against USD. Currency Collapse at Work, -32% against USD since 2021, -50% since 2012 by Wolf Richter • Apr 16, 2024 • 178 Comments Turns out, collapse of the currency is the price Japan is now paying for years of crazed monetary policies.
Our Drunken Sailors Binge despite Higher Interest Rates, and the Fed Watches them Nervously by Wolf Richter • Apr 15, 2024 • 174 Comments Retail sales by major segment: huge winners (on top: ecommerce and general merchandise retailers), and some big losers.
Banks’ Exposure to CRE Loans by Bank Size by Wolf Richter • Apr 13, 2024 • 77 Comments When CRE hits investors, fine, they were paid to take those risks. But we’re a little more squeamish when it comes to banks.
The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in Canada: Home Prices Dip Further, -14% from Peak in March 2022, Now Below Sep 2021 by Wolf Richter • Apr 12, 2024 • 103 Comments Condos in Toronto hit 28-month low. But Vancouver house prices only -3.9% from peak in 2022. Calgary house prices jump to new high; oil boom helps.
Two Things about the PPI Today: The March Seasonal Adjustments Were Huge, and the 3-Month Rates All Jumped by Wolf Richter • Apr 11, 2024 • 93 Comments Including by 7.9% annualized for the not-seasonally adjusted PPI, worst since June 2022. So we’ll take a look.
Treasury Yields Spike, 3-Year by 25 Basis Points. Mortgage Rates Hit 7.34%. Services Inflation Smacks Down Rate-Cut Mania by Wolf Richter • Apr 10, 2024 • 185 Comments A Bloodbath was had by all?
Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation, March: Inflation Behaves Very Badly, Saga Far from Over by Wolf Richter • Apr 10, 2024 • 201 Comments Ugly inflation in services drives up 3-month “core CPI” for 7th month, to 4.5% annualized, worst in a year, and 3-month overall CPI to worst since Nov 2022.
The Biggest Landlords of Single-Family Rental Houses and Multifamily Apartments: Who Owns the US Housing Stock? by Wolf Richter • Apr 9, 2024 • 170 Comments 80% of single-family rentals are mom-and-pop; mega-landlords own just 3%. But mega-landlords dominate multifamily rentals.
What Jamie Dimon Said about Long-Term Inflation, Fed Interest Rates (“2% to 8% or even more”), and QE/QT (it’s Risky) by Wolf Richter • Apr 8, 2024 • 150 Comments “Rates have been extremely low for a long time — it’s hard to know how many investors and companies are truly prepared for a higher rate environment.”
Bank of Canada Balance Sheet QT Sheds 64% of Pandemic QE Assets, Indicates QT Might End in September 2025 by Wolf Richter • Apr 7, 2024 • 53 Comments “Balance sheet normalization” will continue even if the BoC cuts its rates. It’s all about “settlement balances.”
ECB Balance Sheet QT: -€2.2 Trillion from Peak, to €6.61 Trillion. Shed 25% of Total Assets, 53% of Pandemic QE by Wolf Richter • Apr 7, 2024 • 38 Comments Fed and ECB combined removed $4 trillion in liquidity. Inflation, after decades of calm, is hammering some sense into these central banks.
10-Year Yield Hits 4.40% as Bond Market Begins to Adjust to Higher Forever: Higher Rates and Higher Inflation by Wolf Richter • Apr 5, 2024 • 204 Comments Suddenly lots of talk the 10-year yield will revisit 5%, which is funny just a few months after Rate-Cut Mania.
Nothing in the Jobs Report Indicates the Fed Should Cut Rates: Labor Market Plugging Along Just Fine despite 5.5% Rates by Wolf Richter • Apr 5, 2024 • 73 Comments And wages rose at a good clip too.
Fed Balance Sheet QT: -$1.53 Trillion from Peak, to $7.44 Trillion, Lowest since February 2021. The BTFP Plunged by $34 Billion by Wolf Richter • Apr 4, 2024 • 137 Comments Quantitative Tightening has removed 37% of Treasury securities and 27% of MBS that pandemic QE had added.
Fed’s Kashkari Says Quiet Part Out Loud: Maybe No Rate Cuts in 2024 if Inflation Continues to Move “Sideways” by Wolf Richter • Apr 4, 2024 • 107 Comments The stock market didn’t like that at all.
How the Huge Wave of Immigrants into the US in 2022 and 2023 Impacts the Employment Data of the BLS Household Survey by Wolf Richter • Apr 3, 2024 • 112 Comments The BLS uses the Census Bureau’s understated population estimates that ignore the surge of immigrants. But the CBO’s estimates pick them up.
Side Effect of US Oil & Gas Boom: Record Ethane Production & Exports by Wolf Richter • Apr 3, 2024 • 45 Comments Production, consumption by the US petrochemical industry, and exports all hit records, and the price collapsed.
This Labor Market Is Not Loosening Further: Fed Gets More Reason for Wait-and-See by Wolf Richter • Apr 2, 2024 • 86 Comments But the headlines-grabbing layoff announcements had the effect of calming the churn.