The Economic Week In Review…..

17. November 2007 by Burbank Real Estate.

This week saw volatile trading sessions , concerns over rising fuel costs and the now usual credit rumors.

Items of note:

• Pending Home Sales for September increased 0.2 percent higher to 85.7. But a look at the year over year data – down 20.4 percent — tells a more meaningful story. Still the data is no worse and possibly a turning point compared against the 21.5 percent drop for August.
• Fed Chairman Bernanke announced that, in an effort to create more transparency, it would start to give quarterly enonomic forecasts as opposed to the biannual forecasts and that it would give a 3 year as opposed to the current 2 year forecast.
• The amount of foreign investments in the US for September came in at $26.4B, which is not a large amount but was a relief compared to the large contraction of foreign investments in the US markets for August, which came in at -69.3B.
• Retail sales came in weak at .2%
• Bear Stearns wrote down $1.2B and HSBC has added a whopping $3.2B to their consumer loan portfolios.
• Fed Governor Randall Kozner made comments that even if the economy hits a rough patch he does not see further rate cuts.
• FedEx, Starbucks, Macy’s and JC Penney’s, just to name a few, lowered earnings estimates.

The Dow ended the week up 1%.

Have a great weekend!

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