The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage decreased 4 basis point since last week to 5.74% while the purchase application volume decreased by 0.8% and the refinance application volume increased 5.2% compared to last week’s results.

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest nominal read on retail sales showing a increase of 0.2% from February 2008 and 2.0% since March 2007 on an aggregate of all items including food, fuel and healthcare services.

Discretionary retail sales including home furnishings, home garden and building materials, consumer electronics and department store sales, on the other hand, experienced a significant decline falling 0.58% since February 2008 and 3.66% compared to March 2007.

Further, adjusted for inflation, discretionary retail sales declined 0.61% since February 2008 and 7.05% since March 2007.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage increased 3 basis point since last week to 5.78% while the purchase application volume increased by 8.1% and the refinance application volume increased 3.4% compared to last week’s results.

Today’s results of the Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators continues to predict troubled times ahead declining 0.4% from January’s revised level and 1.53% on a year-over-year basis compared to February 2007, a fifth straight monthly decline and sixth straight year-over-year decline leaving the index at 135.4.

It’s important to note that a year-over-year decline greater than 1.5% has ONLY preceded EVERY recession that has occurred in the last 59 years so the six significant consecutive year-over-year declines strongly suggests that overall the components of the index are indicating that recession is either here or very near.

Note that at the end of March, The Conference Board will release its annual benchmark revision to the index as some of the source data is updated.

Today, the Department of Labor released their latest read of Joblessness showing seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increasing 22,000 to 378,000 from last week’s upwardly revised 356,000 claims and “continued” claims increased 32,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.2%.

Historically, unemployment claims both “initial” and “continued” (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows “initial” and “continued” claims, averaged monthly, overlaid with U.S. recessions since 1967 and from 2000.

As you can see, acceleration to claims generally precedes recessions.

Today’s New Residential Construction Report continues to firmly demonstrate the intensity of the total washout conditions that now exist in the nation’s housing markets and particularly for new residential construction showing tremendous declines on both a peak and year-over-year basis to single family permits both nationally and across every region.

Single family housing permits, the most leading of indicators, again suggests extensive weakness in future construction activity dropping 41.86% nationally as compared to February 2007.

Moreover, every region showed significant double digit declines to permits with the West declining 53.4%, the South declining 40.7%, the Midwest declining 36.2% and the Northeast declining 20.0%.

Keep in mind that these declines are coming on the back of last year’s record declines.

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest nominal read on retail sales showing a decline of 0.6% from January 2008 and a 2.6% increase since February 2007 on an aggregate of all items including food, fuel and healthcare services.

Discretionary retail sales including home furnishings, home garden and building materials, consumer electronics and department store sales, on the other hand, experienced a significant decline falling 0.38% since January 2008 and 1.88% compared to February 2007.

Further, adjusted for inflation, discretionary retail sales declined 5.74% since February 2007.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

Following up on a prior post, take a look at the trend and most recent state of the S&P 500 index and compare it to the last major bear market conditions that followed the dot-com bust.

There is a host of very interesting technical similarities (which are noted below) that may indicate that we have entered or are just about to enter another bear market where on average the S&P 500 index retraces 20 – 30% from its prior peak.

It’s important to keep in mind that, at best, a bear market can be viewed as a transition into an period where there is a prolonged bias to sell into strength resulting in a successive series of lower highs yielding a clear downward trend.

At worst, there are periods (days or weeks) where particular stocks and the index as a whole will crash hard.

Reflecting both substantial benchmark revisions and ongoing weakness, today’s Employment Situation Report again showed declining employment with both the Household and Establishment data indicating recessionary conditions and a decline to total non-farm payrolls of 62,000 from January and substantial downward revisions to the December 2007 and January 2008 results.

The report also disclosed continued and even peaking below trend growth overall and substantial declines in sectors directly related to residential real estate and construction.

The following chart combines both the “residential building” and “residential specialty trade contractors” into one payroll series and then plotting the data since 2002.

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Pending Home Sales Report for January 2008 showing accelerating weakness to existing home sales activity and a clear continuation of the historic decline to residential housing on a year-over-year basis, both nationally and in every region.

As the decline in demand for residential housing enters its third year, it’s important to consider the significance of both the extent of the decline and the severity of the oncoming declines to existing home sales activity clearly indicated by the current 20% year-over-year drop-off in pending home sales.

Today, the Department of Labor released their latest read of Joblessness showing seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims decreasing 24,000 to 351,000 from last week’s upwardly revised 375,000 claims and “continued” claims increased 29,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.1%.

Historically, unemployment claims both “initial” and “continued” (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows “initial” and “continued” claims, averaged monthly, overlaid with U.S. recessions since 1967 and from 2000.

As you can see, acceleration to claims generally precedes recessions.

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released their January read of construction spending again demonstrating the significant extent to which private residential construction is contracting particularly for single family structures.

With the tremendous weakening trend continuing, total residential construction spending fell 19.69% as compared to January 2007 and 34.52% from the peak set in February 2006.

Worse off though was private single family residential construction spending which declined 32.13% as compared to January 2007 and a truly grotesque 49.75% from the peak also set in February 2006.

This post combines the results of the Rueters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, The Conference Board’s Index of CEO Confidence and The Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic indicators into a post that will run twice monthly as preliminary data is firmed.

These three indicators should disclose a clear picture of both the overall sense of confidence (or lack thereof) on the part of consumers and businesses as well the overall trend of economic circumstances.

Today’s final release of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers for February confirmed a shocking plunge in consumer sentiment to a final reading of 70.8, a decline of 22.45% compared to February 2007.

It appears now completely certain that the federal government, in attempting to “bail out” market participants that are hopelessly overleveraged and markets that are wholly overvalued, will lean on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by expanding their operations to include massive Jumbo loans.

It’s important to note that these changes are taking place with no required modifications to the GSEs operational practices and no additional powers granted to their Federal regulator the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO).

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their second installment of the Q4 2007 GDP report showing a truly anemic annual growth rate of 0.6%.

This stunning reversal from the exceptionally “hot” rate of growth seen in Q3 2007 was fueled primarily by accelerating declines in fixed residential investment, slowing growth to fixed non-residential investment, and a sudden deceleration in the export of goods to a much weaker 4.0% growth rate.

In fact, the deceleration to the export of goods was so severe that it seems altogether possible that the Q3 26.6% growth rate was an temporary aberration, a result of there being a brief disconnect between the slowing U.S. economy (and weak dollar) and the rest of the world economies relative strength.

Today, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) published their Home Price Index (HPI) data for Q4 2007 showing unprecedentedly widespread weakness with 49 states and Washington DC experiencing peak home price declines with 20 declining better than 2% and 8 declining more that 6%.

Topping the list of peak decliners by state is California at -14.72%, Michigan at-13.48%, Nevada at -11.50%, Florida at -8.51%, Washington DC at -8.07, Arizona at -7.11%, Massachusetts as -6.34% and Rhode Island at -6.02%.

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for December continues to reflect tremendous weakness for the nation’s housing markets with 17 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and ALL metro areas showing substantial declines from their respective peaks.

Furthermore, the decline to the 10 city composite index declined a record 9.82% as compared to December 2006 far surpassing the all prior year-over-year decline records firmly placing the current decline in uncharted territory in terms of relative intensity.

This report appears to continue to indicate that during the fall we essentially entered the serious price “free-fall” phase (look at the charts below) of the housing decline.

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for January again confirming, perfectly clearly, the tremendous weakness in the demand of existing residential real estate with both single family homes and condos declining uniformly across the nation’s housing markets.

Although this continued and even worsening falloff in demand is mostly as a result of the momentous and ongoing structural changes that are taking place in the credit-mortgage markets, consumer sentiment surveys are now indicating that consumers are materially feeling the current recessionary trend which will likely result in even further significant sales declines to come.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage increased since last week to 5.72% while the purchase application volume decreased 0.3% and the refinance application volume decreased a 3.0% compared to last week’s results.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage increased since last week to 5.61% while the purchase application volume increased 12.0% and the refinance application volume decreased a 1.0% compared to last week’s results.

Following up on a prior post, take a look at the trend and most recent state of the S&P 500 index and compare it to the last major bear market conditions that followed the dot-com bust.

There is a host of very interesting technical similarities (which are noted below) that may indicate that we have entered or are just about to enter another bear market where on average the S&P 500 index retraces 20 – 30% from its prior peak.

It’s important to keep in mind that, at best, a bear market can be viewed as a transition into an period where there is a prolonged bias to sell into strength resulting in a successive series of lower highs yielding a clear downward trend.

At worst, there are periods (days or weeks) where particular stocks and the index as a whole will crash hard.

Reflecting both substantial benchmark revisions and ongoing weakness, today’s Employment Situation Report again showed declining growth to employment with both the Household and Establishment data indicating anemic conditions and a decline to total non-farm payrolls of 17,000 from December 2007.

The report also disclosed continued and even peaking below trend growth overall and substantial declines in sectors directly related to residential real estate and construction.

The following chart combines both the “residential building” and “residential specialty trade contractors” into one payroll series and then plotting the data since 2002.

Notice that, in aggregate, these payrolls, having peaked in March 2006 and declined 6.83% or 293,100 jobs since then, appear to be headed lower.

Today, the Department of Labor released their latest read of Joblessness showing seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increasing 69,000 and “continued” claims increasing 47,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.0%.

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their first installment of the Q4 2007 GDP report showing a truly anemic annual growth rate of 0.6%.

Today’s release of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices for November continues to reflect tremendous weakness for the nation’s housing markets with 17 of the 20 metro areas tracked reporting year-over-year declines and ALL metro areas showing declines from their respective peaks.

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for December again confirming, perfectly clearly, that demand for residential real estate, both single family and condos, has taken a new and substantial leg down uniformly across the nation’s housing markets likely as a direct result of the momentous and ongoing structural changes that are taking place in the credit-mortgage markets

Today, the Department of Labor released their latest read Joblessness showing “initial” unemployment claims declining 1,000 and “continued” claims declining 75,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.0%.

Historically, unemployment claims both “initial” and “continued” (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

Today, the Department of Labor released their latest read Joblessness showing “initial” unemployment claims declining 21,000 and “continued” claims increasing 66,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.1%.

Historically, unemployment claims both “initial” and “continued” (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.