The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America amid the Now-Fizzled Rate-Cut Mania & Erstwhile Plunge in Mortgage Rates by Wolf Richter • Apr 30, 2024 • 145 Comments Rate-Cut Mania died, mortgage rates re-jumped to 7.5% today, but here’s what home prices did during Rate-Cut Mania.
Sagging Used-Car Prices, Spiking Maintenance & Repair Costs, and a Post-Bankruptcy Propaganda Coup Turn Toxic for Hertz by Wolf Richter • Apr 29, 2024 • 146 Comments Americans need lower car prices. But not Hertz. “The residual decline … was relative to both ICE vehicles and EVs”: Hertz
Money Market Funds, T-Bills, Large CDs, Small CDs: Americans Learn to Arbitrage the Higher-for-Longer Interest Rates by Wolf Richter • Apr 27, 2024 • 137 Comments There’s no need to still pay a “loyalty tax” to the banks.
Fed’s Wait-and-See on Rate Cuts Further Supported by Extra-Hot “Core Services” PCE Inflation & Hot “Core” PCE Inflation by Wolf Richter • Apr 26, 2024 • 199 Comments Housing inflation refuses to cool for eighth month, and five of the remaining seven core services accelerated further. This is not good.
Our Drunken Sailors Splurge on Services, Fixed Investment Surges. But Much-Worse Imports Drag Bigly on GDP. And there’s a Blip in Government Spending by Wolf Richter • Apr 25, 2024 • 113 Comments Re-accelerating inflation in Q1 hit “real” GDP growth. “Current-dollar” GDP growth only a hair slower than in Q4.
Biggest Landlords Pile into “Build-to-Rent” Single-Family Houses, but Sell Older Houses into this Overpriced Market by Wolf Richter • Apr 24, 2024 • 100 Comments American Homes 4 Rent and Invitation Homes sold over 3,000 older single-family houses in 2023.
How It’ll Take Years to Clean Up the Office CRE Mess, with Losses Spread Far and Wide by Wolf Richter • Apr 24, 2024 • 80 Comments The Manhattan office tower Blackstone had bought for $605 million in 2014 and walked away from 2 years ago finally changed hands for $200 million, which paves the way for a complex new beginning.
Prices of New Houses v. Existing Houses: Why New-House Sales Held Up as Existing-House Sales Plunged by Wolf Richter • Apr 23, 2024 • 83 Comments Here’s why: New house prices -18% from peak, back to Nov 2021, further sweetened by mortgage-rate buydowns.
Brick-and-Mortar Meltdown Fells Express. Simon Property & Brookfield, to Avert Vacant Stores and Bad Leases at their Malls, to Buy the Brands and 435 Stores out of Bankruptcy by Wolf Richter • Apr 22, 2024 • 99 Comments This Has Been Years in the Making.
Nvidia, Supermicro Make Huge Mess of AI-Semiconductor Mania, Netflix Plunges, Big Tech Follows by Wolf Richter • Apr 19, 2024 • 214 Comments Nasdaq fell 2.05%, back to where it had been in September 2021. We have some new WTF Charts of the Year.
