Thursday, June 29, 2017


(Reuters) - Global debt levels have climbed $500 billion in the past year to a record $217 trillion, a new study shows, just as major central banks prepare to end years of super-cheap credit policies.



Global debt, as a result, now amounts to 327 percent of the world's annual economic output, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said in a report late on Tuesday.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

QUICK OVERVIEW



  • The National Association of Realtors said US existing home sales rose 1.1% to  5.62 million units last month. The number of homes on the market rose 2.1%, but supply was down 8.4% YoY. Housing inventory has dropped for 24 straight months.

  • (SD Union) San Diego based Guild Mortgage has launched a 1% down payment mortgage. (back to ZERO soon)

  • U.S. current account deficit widens a bit to 2.5 percent of GDP.


  • Ford announced that it would be moving the production of its Focus compact car from Michigan to China in 2019. Under pressure from Trump, Ford scrapped its plans to build a $1 billion plant in Mexico that would've produced its Focus.

  • Wall Street is fretting that the U.S. auto industry is heading for a downturn..

  • Business confidence in Asia rose to a three-year-high in Q2 of the year.


  • German PPI -0.2% vs. -0.1% forecast

  • Japans YoY 14.9% increase in exports was below the estimate for a 16.1% annual increase but was nonetheless the biggest rise since January 2015.
  • Japan's government raised its overall view of the economy for the first time in six months by saying the recovery is intact.
  • YoY Mexico's annual inflation rate rose to 6.3% faster than expected and the highest in more than eight years – so  Mexico raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point to 7.00%.
  • The Bloomberg Agriculture Index is at the lowest since Dec. 2008. Sugar, Corn, Coffee etc. all down.

Monday, June 19, 2017

QUICK OVERVIEW



  • The Fed raised  rates by a 1/4 to a target range of 1.00%  to 1.25% and is  forecasting one more hike this year. The Fed  wants to begin  shrinking  its 4.5 trillion balance sheet…

  • The U.S. sentiment index has dropped to 86.7 from 97.7 prior to June.

  • U.S. consumer prices fell 0.1% last month, disappointing forecasts for an increase of 0.1% and following a gain of 0.2% in April.

  • MoM U.S retail sales fell 0.3% in May, below forecasts for a gain of 0.1%

  • CoreLogic reports that U.S. mortgage delinquencies in March dropped to a 10-year low.

  • In the UK, support for Brexit is collapsing…

  • There are 16 million Bitcoin addresses with $61 or less and only 1780 with more than $608,000.  Last week’s high was almost $3,000 to a low of $2,076. It closed out on Friday at $2,485.

  • China's central bank left interest rates unchanged.

  • Chinese industrial production 6.5% vs. 6.3% forecast

  • Chinese retail sales 10.7% vs. 10.6% forecast

  • A Hong Kong parking space sold for $664,300

  • Monsoon predicts a normal monsoon for 2017 and suggests that June to September rainfall will be 98 percent of the Long Period Average  May 30, 2017, was the official onset date for the 2017 Southwest Monsoon when showers hit southern India.  

  • A significant portion of internet traffic isn't real. It's perpetuated by bots, fake accounts set up to artificially inflate the popularity of a website, social media post, or advertisement. On Sunday, the world got a rare look at what the click fraud business really looks like.