Tag: dec 7 2021

The average U.S. home price rose 19.5 percent during the 12 months ending 30 September, compared to a 19.8-percent jump for the year ending 31 August, according to data from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. Sticker shock deterred some buyers, The Wall Street Journal reported. Still, the number of homes up for...

For the second consecutive year, fewer shoppers opened their wallets on the four-day holiday shopping weekend following Thanksgiving. This year, about 180 million Americans made purchases in stores or online over the Black Friday weekend, compared with 186.4 million in 2020 and 189.6 in 2019, the National Retail Federation (NRF) reported. Many shoppers had made...

Almost 27 percent of U.S. consumers have applied for a new credit card in the past 12 months, according to an October survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most since 2019 and far surpassing 2020’s record low rate of 16 percent. “Many things are slowly returning to more normal times,” Wilbert...

The U.S. economy created a meager 210,000 jobs in November, according to the U.S. labor department, less than half of the 550,000 to 573,000 that analysts had predicted. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent from the 4.6 percent notched in October and is down almost 1.8 percentage points over the...

In November, prices of high-yield or “junk” bonds fell and saw their sharpest decline in more than a year as investors feared the Omicron virus would disrupt the economy to the degree that risky companies would not be able to repay their loans. ICE Data Services’ high-yield bond index slumped more than 1 percent last...

It comes as no surprise to Trends Journal subscribers. When the COVID War was launched last year there was an unprecedented spike in stocks of businesses that benefited from the lockdowns… with tech stocks and riskier issues leading the charge. Now, with many aspects of the COVID War in place, or slowing down, these hi-flyers...

The U.S. Federal Reserve is prepared to end its monthly bond-buying program of economic support sooner than the mid-2022 date it had earlier set, Fed chair Jerome Powell said in 30 November testimony before Congress. The Fed voted to taper its $120-billion monthly bond purchases by $15 billion in each of November and December; continuing...

As if the OMICRON Hysteria evaporated, and there were no new lockdowns, travel restriction, vax mandates, protests and other COVID War 2.0 battles being fought, yesterday, the U.S. equities snapped back with the hope that the OMICRON will be a mild variant.  The S&P 500 gained back nearly all its losses of last week, the...

On 1 December, U.S. equity markets retreated on news that the first case of the COVID virus’s Omicron variant had appeared in the U.S.  The Dow shed 461 points on the day, about 1.3 percent. The NASDAQ had gained 1.8 percent earlier in the day but gave it all back by the market’s close.  The...