Economic Statistics
A moderately busy day in data-land - although the big-ticket numbers this week are tomorrow's PPI and Consumer Sentiment data (consensus estimates were in yesterday's brief).
The Import and Export Prices report measures the change in the prices of traded goods & services; the ratio of the two is an input into the terms of trade.
Within the report -
- Import Prices rose 0.2%, slightly faster than the consensus estimates of 0.1%, however Import Prices (excluding Petroleum) rose 0.7 which was much faster than expected; overall, import prices have risen 9.5% since this time last year, thanks to energy prices rising 28% in a four months period recently as Crude Oil had its recent price spike and blowoff;
- Export Prices rose 0.3% (there is no consensus estimate for this figure) and have risen 4.3% year-on-year; excluding agriculture exports (the prices of which fell 0.1%), export prices rose 0.4% and 5.4% year on year. This is explained in part by the weaker US dollar, which enables higher USD prices (for export contracts struck in foreign dollar terms) without affecting foreign-currency denominated demand.
Thursday is always New Jobless Claims Day. I doubt that this will ever rival World Endangered Species Day, but it's important to get a read on the poor schlubs who line up to collect unemployment benefits. This report was considerably worse than estimates, and although the very short-term trend (the 4-week average) is still subdued, the continuing claims numbers tell a tale of renewed slack in the employment market.
- Jobless Claims at 357k; consensus estimates called for 335k (range 325k-340k);
- Continuing claims at 2.796m; consensus estimates called for ;
Last but not least, there was the Wholesale Trade report. Again, there is no consensus estimates for this report, which attempts to give a read on the state of play in the intermediate-goods sector (i.e., producers of stuff, selling stuff to producers of other stuff - for use as inputs, or as final sales).
The overall picture was one of a fairly sluggish trend, albeit an upward trend. Thankfully, these numbers don't suffer from the political-sanitation machine too much: there's no hedonic adjustment (but there is seasonal adjustment, which is just as poisonous when it's being done by political appointees).
- Wholesale Inventories rose 1.1%, and was concentrated in durable goods;
- Wholesale Sales rose 1.8%; and
- the Inventory-Sales ratio was basically unchanged at 1.15x.
