Archive for November 2016

Net income at all 5,980 FDIC insured banks rose $5.2 billion Y-o-Y to $45.6 billion in 16Q3. Looking at the subset of 5,521 community banks, quarterly net income rose $593 million Y-o-Y to $5.6 billion. Better yet, fewer than 5% of banks said they were unprofitable, the lowest percentage since 97Q3 and the number of…

One reason existing home sales and inventory have recovered so slowly is a decline in moving. The percentage of Americans that moved fell to an all-time low of 11.2% in 2016 from a peak of 42% in the early 1950s. Numerically, moving activity topped out in 1984 at 45 million and has steadily fallen to…

US consumer sentiment surged in November to 93.8, its best reading since 5/16, and up from 91.6 in mid-November and 87.2 in October, which matched a two-year low. While the mid-November reading was based on interviews through election day, the 93.8 November reading includes pre- and post-election interviews. The rising optimism was quite widespread and…

The Friday File: The costliest retail location in the world is 5th Avenue in NYC between 49th and 60th Streets; the rent is $3,500/square foot/year. Next comes Causeway Bay in Hong Kong at $2,399, the Champs Elysees in Paris at $1,372, and New Bond Street in London at $1,321. Among the 15 costliest locations only…

51 million turkeys costing $1 billion will be eaten this Thanksgiving by the 85% of Americans who will eat turkey. There is an 18% chance you bird comes from Minnesota and a 14% chance it comes from NC. The average number of calories consumed by Americans on Thanksgiving including the meal, snacking and nibbling is…

Sales of heavy trucks, those weighing over seven tons, peaked at a seasonally adjusted rate of 555,000 in 8/06, but then buckled in the Great Recession to 181,000 by 5/09. Sales then quickly recovered to 479,000 by 6/15 then fell to just 370,000 in 7/16 due to the oil price collapse. Since then, sales have…

Talk of walling off Mexico, deporting illegals and ripping up NAFTA has, unsurprisingly, hit Mexico hard. Despite repeated increases in interest rates to defend the peso, one US dollar now buys 20.5 pesos, up from 18.3 right before the election, and 16.5 on 11/21/15. Now, importing Mexican manufactured goods like cars is much cheaper, hurting…

The Friday File: By requiring readers to understand characters’ motivations and intuit their feelings, reading literary fiction is highly correlated with, and possibly fosters, empathy towards others. Moreover, fiction readers also have richer social networks than those that read less fiction. The key, a moving and transformative narrative. Forget the “Art of the Deal”, I’m…

Today’s weekly first-time unemployment claims data came in at a staggeringly low level of 235,000, the lowest weekly level since 11/24/73. The data has been strong for years and suggests very few layoffs. Additionally, October housing starts were very good! While YTD starts are up 5.9%, all important single-family starts are up a strong 10.1%.…

With Trump in charge, but with so much still unknown, GDP growth will probably be a bit faster in 2017; 2.3%. Still not high, but an improvement. Inflation will rise to 2.2% in 2017. While also not high, it’s much higher than the 1.5% inflation we have been experiencing. Lastly, unemployment should fall to 4.6%…