All Things in Moderation

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are lower this morning as earnings continue to come in. Bonds and MBS are flat.

The FOMC begins its 2 day meeting today. The decision is expected to come out at 2:00 pm tomorrow afternoon.

Personal consumption and personal incomes came in as expected, with consumption rising 0.3% and personal incomes rising 0.4%. The core PCE inflation index (which is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation) rose 0.2% month-over-month and 1.6% YOY, which was slightly lower than expectations. Finally, disposable personal income rose 0.4%, while the savings rate was 8.1%. Overall, this report won’t move the needle with respect to the Fed’s thinking about the economy. The economy is moving along, and inflation remains below the Fed’s target rate.

You can see how much the savings rate has increased since the bubble days. Remember when the business press was wringing its hands over the drop in the savings rate?

Home Prices rose 0.2% MOM and 3.4% YOY according to the Case-Shiller home price index. YOY home price appreciation has been decelerating for some time as higher interest rates and higher home prices begin to bite. Erstwhile market darling Seattle reported a YOY decline of 1.2%, while the gainers were Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tampa.

Bloomberg has an interesting chart of the global real estate and looks at home prices versus rents and incomes. It shows Canada and New Zealand as the most vulnerable markets. It doesn’t show China, which has a huge bubble and probably doesn’t fit on the diagram. Scandinavia also has a bubble issue as well. For those that admire the Scandinavian economies, remember that whenever a country appears to have have “cracked the code” economically (like the US in the 20s, Japan in the 80s, etc) it usually has a real estate bubble lurking in the background.

Note that despite all the talk about real estate bubbles in the US, we are actually on the cheap side, as is Japan.

The US vacancy rate was 6.8% for rental properties and 1.5% for homeowner housing in the second quarter of 2019. The homeownership vacancy rate of 1.5% is the lowest since 1981, and illustrates the supply issue that is only going to get worse as homebuilding fails to keep up with household formation.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |