Mortgage rates will put a little bit of a brake on housing activity, ... but it may come precisely as other sectors start to turn around.
We see the slowdown crystal clear in the MBA purchase index, and it's starting to show up in monthly sales data. The one thing that was supporting the market, low mortgage rates, is being taken away.
The impact of higher energy prices is starting to bite corporate America. It's either going to raise costs or lower demand.
Now, with the economic recovery appearing to be somewhat in place and the central bank not lowering rates, we see people trying to get in at the gates before rates start to rise.
The labor market seems to be improving, but still at such slow pace, it's probably too early to start celebrating.
Rates might be low, but people are starting to realize that rates will go up. Remember you've got to get a mortgage down the line, maybe six months out when the home is complete. People are preparing for it.
The average hourly earnings figures were truly the spoiler of this report, ... It tells us that the Fed may now have to start becoming more vigilant about upcoming price pressures.
There's a very good likelihood we'll see the sector come back as rebuilding takes place and the economy starts to react to the huge stimulus in the pipeline.
We're starting to see the savings rate pick up from near historic levels, which is very encouraging. Though we don't expect Fed tightening to work overnight, we are starting to see some of the early results of the significant tightening we've seen to date.
There doesn't seem to be any real urgency for firms to start hiring, precisely at a time we're seeing a reemergence of people becoming interested in looking for a job, ... Put the two together, and you have a formula for higher unemployment.
I think we'll see a clear acceleration of refund payments as we get closer to the April deadline, when the checks really start to flow. People tend to procrastinate.
More rate cuts may not be forthcoming, but the Fed is also not likely to start raising rates as quickly as financial markets expect.
Exports increased by such a small amount, it's not enough to tell me the inventory problem is going to go away. We need world economic growth to start picking up.
Inflationary pressures are starting to percolate --and the Federal Reserve is going to react to this.
If housing is starting to weaken and manufacturing is not turning around, obviously it spells trouble for the economy.
Real new home sale prices and existing-home sale prices have been rising very sharply. When that starts to give way and we don't have the equity market picking up where housing left off, that's another reason the economic expansion will be gradual.
The outsized gain in housing starts was influenced by the same variable dominating most of the other headline stats like the retail sales and industrial production, namely weather. Everyone knows that housing starts is a volatile number that generally reports wide swings.
This report is certainly consistent with an economy that is trying to make a recovery, but a weak recovery. When you start to back out the volatile components, it's not all that weak. We're picking it up, but these numbers tell us the economy will come back slowly.
My suspicion is that the dollar will remain relatively strong because, even if the ECB starts lowering rates, they've got a lot of catching up to do, ... The prognosis for the dollar remains cautiously optimistic.
We'll start seeing solid and significant evidence of recovery in the manufacturing sector in the first quarter next year. It was the first to go into recession and will be the first to come out.
What investors should realize is that the hostesses have been recruited to start removing the punch bowls from all Fed reception rooms and will soon be out full in force and ready to continue raising short-term rates well into 2003.
The two months of favorable data allow us to start connecting the dots. It gives us a picture of a rapidly improving labor market. I think we can categorically say we have seen a sea change in labor market environment at this time.