Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

U.S. STOCKS CONTINUE RECOVERY LAST WEEK: U.S. equity markets gained for a second consecutive week as investors grew confident that the American economy will weather the Ukraine war and the Federal Reserve’s rising interest rates, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Dow Jones Industrial Average edged up 0.3 percent on the week. The NASDAQ added...

Since China launched the COVID War on Lunar New Year, The Year of the Rat, in January 2020, life has changed. “Business as usual,” is now the new ABnormal. There is nothing “normal” about it.  Where the Trends Journal is based in historic Kingston, New York, the third Dutch settlement, at night, around 10 PM,...

Travelers are flocking to the skies, U.S. airlines say, and in such high numbers that the carriers can cover the soaring cost of fuel, The Wall Street Journal reported. As the Omicron variant ebbed, ticket sales shot up more than the carriers had expected, airline executives told the WSJ. In February, bookings and revenue exceeded...

The average monthly vehicle payment for any kind of car or truck is now $691, according to data service Cox Automotive.  Consumers should spend no more than 10 percent of their net monthly pay on a vehicle, according to financial website Nerdwallet.  Under that guideline, car buyers would need to net $6,910 a month to...

About 45 percent of late-stage Millennials, those ages 18 to 35, are waiting for “normal” times to return before beginning their retirement savings, according to Fidelity Investment’s 2022 State of Retirement Planning survey.  Almost half the survey’s respondents in that age range “don’t see a point in saving for retirement until things return to normal,”...

For the first time since May 2019, interest rates for 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages have risen above 4 percent, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation reported last week. The rate hit a historic low of 2.65 percent in January 2021 and stood at an average of 3.22 percent at the beginning of this year. Rates will...

Last year, for the first time, U.S. homeowners gained more in value through the rise in the value of their homes than by working full-time, according to Zillow Group, which operates the Zillow online real estate brokerage. In 2021, the average value of U.S. homes rose 19.6 percent to $321,634, a gain of $52,667, compared...

In February, 7.2 percent fewer previously owned homes sold than in the month before and 2.4 percent fewer than a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. The seasonally adjusted total of 6.02 million homes fell short of the 6.13 million sales and 5.7-percent decline economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had...

Retailers are discovering the point at which higher prices mean falling sales. Macy’s added $100 to the price of some mattresses and sofas and sales dropped. Clothier Bella Dahl raised t-shirt prices by $20; customers stopped buying and the company rolled back the increase. “There was a revolt,” chief brand officer Steven Millman told The...

The U.S. producer price index (PPI)—the prices that factories pay for their products’ components and raw materials—rose 0.8 percent in February, easing from January’s 1.2-percent gain. The PPI is seen as a leading indicator of inflation’s direction. The core PPI, which excludes the always-volatile costs of food and energy, edged up just 0.2 percent, a...