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Atlas' Monday note covered the most recent employment report.  If you did not have a chance to see it or want to reference it, click here.  One of the more positive developments to come out of the report was an increase in average hourly earnings.  This is an important statistic because it sug

Americans continued feeling chuffed in January 2018 according to two popular measures of consumer attitudes.  Consumer Confidence from the Conference Board jumped to 125.4 after the upwardly revised tally of 123.1 (originally 122.1).  However, there was a small letdown in the Consumer Sentiment figure from the University of Michigan which moved down a touch, falling to 95.7 from 95.9

America’s economy decelerated in the final three months of 2017 according to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  On an inflation-adjusted annualized basis, output grew by 2.6 percent from October through December.  This followed improvements of 3.1 percent and 3.5 percent in the second and third quarters respectively.  Despite the

Personal income and spending each improved to end 2017, but their rates of change were different.  Americans’ pay managed to grow just 0.3 percent while outlays increased 0.5 percent.  Additionally, there was a key revision to the prior period’s tally as outlays actually increased 0.8 percent (originally 0.6 percent), but November’s income tally remained as initially

America’s economy continued adding jobs in January according to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s report on the employment situation.  Employers added 200,000 net new jobs in the period.  Additionally, December’s tally was upwardly revised to 160,000 (originally 148,000), but November’s tally was downwardly revised to 216,000 (originally 252,000).  Including

Many comparisons between the U.S. and Chinese economy have been made lately both in the press and by numerous talking heads.  At our most recent Pie Party this topic came up for discussion.  Caught by surprise, J R (incredibly!) turned to technology for an answer.  He brought up the Big Mac Index.

Durable Goods Orders jumped in December 2017 according to the Census Bureau.  Rising 2.9 percent to $249.4 billion, the most recent uptick followed November’s upwardly revised tally of 1.7 percent (originally 1.3 percent).  From the vantage point of this indicator’s headline, the outlook for the economy is positive as orders for wares expected to last at least three years

Sales of new homes fell in December 2017 according to the Census Bureau.  Signed contracts declined 9.3 percent in the period to 625,000 units on an annualized rate.

More growth is the message from the latest release of the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index (LEI).  In fact, the December 2017 iteration suggests an acceleration of economic output as the LEI increased to 0.6 percent from the upwardly revised tally of 0.5 percent (originally 0.4 percent).  The recent strength in this indicator bodes well for the first half of 2018.

Existing homes sales declined at the end of 2017 but edged higher for the year, putting in the best annual tally since 2006.  Data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) show sales dropped 3.3 in December to 5.57 million annualized units, a decline from the downwardly revised tally of 5.78 million in November (originally 5.81 million).  Despite the revision, November 2017 was