Category: TRENDS ON THE U.S. ECONOMIC FRONT

Home prices will continue to rise through 2023, although more slowly than 2020’s 11.4-percent peak pace, according to an Urban Land Institute (ULI) survey this month of 42 economists at 39 real estate organizations. Prices will inflate by 8.1 percent this year, 5 percent in 2022, and 4 percent in 2023, bringing the rate slightly...

Half of U.S. hotel rooms are empty most nights, malls struggle to survive, and office buildings are still largely unused. Commercial real estate values, which slumped during the economic shutdown, seem, however, to have stabilized, and, in some cases, have begun to rise again. Market prices for the properties fell only 11 percent last year,...

Sales of existing homes slipped 2.7 percent in April compared to March, the third consecutive month of sliding sales, the National Association of Realtors (NRA) reported. A continuing lack of available homes has pushed up prices. That increase, combined with rising mortgage interest rates, has left fewer potential buyers able to qualify for loans. April’s...

New claims for unemployment insurance totaled 444,000 in the most recent week, the U.S. Labor Department reported, the lowest number in 14 months. The number of people collecting jobless benefits from all state and federal programs fell to 16 million as of 1 May from 16.9 million the previous week, also the fewest since the...

The Defiance Next Gen SPAC-Derived Exchange Traded Fund, which lists special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and the businesses that have gone public through them, has lost 30 percent of its value since mid-February and recently touched a six-month low, the Wall Street Journal reported. A SPAC is a publicly traded company that has no assets and...

Go back to the 23 June 2020 Trends Journal when bitcoin was trading under $10,000 per coin. We had forecast the price would spike much higher “when it solidly breaks above the 10,000 mark.”  It did, and we have been bullish on it. However, the Trends Journal has continually warned that cryptocoins were due for...

STOCKS PLUNGE, STOCKS BOUNCE. The equity markets, the economy… it’s all about cheap money. With inflation spiking, money junkies are worried that interest rates will rise, as will the cost of monetary methadone injected into the system by central banksters.  In the late April meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy committee, several members of...

Bodega Latina Corp., a subsidiary of Mexican retailer Grupo Comercial Chedraui, is buying 250-store Smart & Final, a California-based warehouse grocery store chain from private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The sale’s price was not publicized. Chedraui already owns the California-based El Super chain and the string of 60 Fiesta Mart stores in Texas. The...

BlackRock, the world’s richest asset management company, is paying more than $1 billion to buy 66 multifamily affordable housing blocks with 5,800 apartments in San Diego from the Conrad Prebys Foundation. BlackRock will invest more than $100 million to improve the properties, the company said. Blackrock, one of the nation’s largest landlords with about 100,000...

U.S. banks will cast off about 10 percent of the industry’s workforce, or about 200,000 jobs, through 2030, Wells Fargo banking analyst Michael Mayo has predicted, according to the Financial Times. “This will be the biggest reduction in U.S. bank headcount in history” as banks automate more and more tasks, Mayo told the FT.  The...