Wednesday was marked by Existing Home Sales figures. Total existing-home sales, dipped 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.57 million in April from a downwardly revised 5.70 million in March. Despite last month's decline, sales are still 1.6 percent above a year ago and at the fourth highest pace over the past year. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says every major region except for the Midwest saw a retreat in existing sales in April.
However, the focus of the session was on FOMC Meeting Minutes. U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers agreed they should hold off on raising interest rates until they see evidence that a recent economic slowdown was transitory, minutes from their last policy meeting showed on Wednesday. Nearly all policymakers at the May 2-3 meeting also said they favored starting the wind-down of the Fed's massive holdings of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities this year. The view on short-term interest rates, which the minutes said was "generally" shared by the nine officials who have a vote on policy this year, casts some doubt on Wall Street bets for a hike at the June 13-14 policy meeting.
Thursday brought Unemployment Claims figures. U.S. jobless-benefit claims are hovering near levels that continue to reflect a strong labor market, with figures little changed last week, Labor Department data showed Thursday. Initial benefit filings increased 1k to 234k (forecast was 238k). Continuing claims rose 24k to 1.923m in week ended May 13 (data reported with one-week lag). Four-week average of initial claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, decreased to 235,250 from 241,000 in the prior week.
Focus of the Thursday's session was on UK GDP data. UK gross domestic product (GDP) in volume terms was estimated to have increased by 0.2% between Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2016 and Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2017. UK GDP growth in Quarter 1 2017 has been revised down by 0.1 percentage points from the preliminary estimate published on 28 April 2017; mainly due to broad-based downward revisions within the services sector. UK GDP growth slowed to 0.2% in Quarter 1 2017 as consumer facing industries such as retail and accommodation fell and household spending slowed. This was partly due to rising prices.
On Friday US session GDP and Durable Goods Orders figures were released. Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2017, according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 2.1 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 0.7 percent.
New orders for manufactured durable goods in April decreased $1.6 billion or 0.7 percent to $231.2 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This decrease, down following four consecutive monthly increases, followed a 2.3 percent March increase. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 0.4 percent. Excluding defense, new orders decreased 0.8 percent. Transportation equipment, down following two consecutive monthly increases, led the decrease, $1.0 billion or 1.2 percent to $78.5 billion.
This week markets will be looking at:
CB Consumer Confidence (Tuesday 16:00)
Chicago PMI (Wednesday 15:45)
Pending Home Sales (Wednesday 16:00)
ADP Non-Farm Employment Change (Thursday 14:15)
Unemployment Claims (Thursday 14:30)
ISM Manufacturing PMI (Thursday 16:00)
Non-Farm Employment Change/Unemployment Rate (Friday 14:30)
