by Calculated Risk on 7/20/2020 10:05:00 AM

Just a few comments ...

Last week was the reference week for the monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report.

This means analysts will focus on the Department of Labor's initial weekly claims report to be released this coming Thursday (covering the BLS reference week) for clues about the July employment report.

The consensus is for a 1.3 million initial claims, unchanged from the previous week. Some analysts are expecting an increase in claims this week related to bar and indoor dining closings in some states - and possibly also due to the end of some Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) agreements.  For example, Merrill Lynch economists are expecting an increase to 1.5 million initial claims in the report this week.

Another interesting data point will be released on Wednesday; the Census Bureau's experimental Household Pulse Survey.

Note: Initially the Pulse Survey was planned for 90 days starting April 23rd.  Hopefully this program will be extended!

Ernie Tedeschi (former US Treasury economist) @ernietedeschi has pointed out that his survey was helpful in predicting the June employment report.

Employment in the @uscensusbureau Household Pulse Survey fell another -1.3 million last week alone. It's now fallen -2.6 million cumulatively over the past 3 weeks.

Seasonality & survey noise may be factors, but the HPS did an excellent job of anticipating the June jobs report.

The graph is from Ernie Tedeschi.

The Pulse Survey doesn't align exactly with the reference week.   The release on Wednesday will be for the period July 9th - July 14th, and the release the following week will be for the period July 16th - July 21th.  The reference week is the 12th - 18th.

So we will need to look at two Pulse weekly surveys for hints about the July employment report.

by Calculated Risk on 7/20/2020 08:34:00 AM

These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment - some of the sectors that will recover very slowly.

----- Airlines: Transportation Security Administration -----
The TSA is providing daily travel numbers.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Blue) and 2020 (Red).

On July 19th there were 747,422 travelers compared to 2,727,355 a year ago.

That is a decline of 73%. There had been a slow steady increase from the bottom, but the increase in air travel has slowed.

----- Restaurants: OpenTable -----
The second graph shows the 7 day average of the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities.

Thanks to OpenTable for providing this restaurant data:

This data is updated through July 18, 2020.

This data is "a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. For year-over-year comparisons by day, we compare to the same day of the week from the same week in the previous year."

Note that this data is for "only the restaurants that have chosen to reopen in a given market".

The 7 day average for New York is still off 76%.

Florida is down 62% YoY.  Note that dining seems to be declining in many areas over the last few weeks (certainly due to the recent surge in COVID cases).

----- Movie Tickets: Box Office Mojo -----
This data shows domestic box office for each week (red) and the maximum and minimum for the previous four years.  Data is from BoxOfficeMojo through July 16th.

Note that the data is usually noisy week-to-week and depends on when blockbusters are released.

Movie ticket sales have picked up a slightly from the bottom, but are still under $1 million per week (compared to usually around $300 million per week), and ticket sales have essentially been at zero for seventeen weeks.

Most movie theaters are closed all across the country, and will probably reopen slowly (probably with limited seating at first).

----- Hotel Occupancy: STR -----
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.

The red line is for 2020, dash light blue is 2019, blue is the median, and black is for 2009 (the worst year probably since the Great Depression for hotels).

2020 was off to a solid start, however, COVID-19 crushed hotel occupancy.

Notes: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.

The occupancy rate for the last four weeks was 43.9%, 46.2%, 45.6% and 45.9%. Flattening out well below the median for this week of 75%.

Usually hotel occupancy starts to pick up seasonally in early June. So some of the recent pickup might be seasonal (summer travel).   Note that summer occupancy usually peaks at the end of July or in early August.

----- Gasoline Consumption: Energy Information Administration -----
This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows the year-over-year change in gasoline consumption.

At one point, gasoline consumption was off almost 50% YoY.

As of July 10th, gasoline consumption was only off about 6% YoY (about 94% of normal).

Note: I know several people that have driven to vacation spots - or to visit family - and they usually would have flown.   So this might be boosting gasoline consumption over the summer.

----- Transit: Apple Mobility -----
The final graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: "This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities." This is just a general guide - people that regularly commute probably don't ask for directions.

There is also some great data on mobility from the Dallas Fed Mobility and Engagement Index. However the index is set "relative to its weekday-specific average over January–February", and is not seasonally adjusted, so we can't tell if an increase in mobility is due to recovery or just the normal increase in the Spring and Summer.

This data is through July 18th for the United States and several selected cities.

The graph is the running 7 day average to remove the impact of weekends.

IMPORTANT: All data is relative to January 13, 2020. This data is NOT Seasonally Adjusted. People walk and drive more when the weather is nice, so I'm just using the transit data.

According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7 day average for the US is still only about 52% of the January level. It is at 45% in New York, and 54% in Houston (down over the last few of weeks).

by Calculated Risk on 7/19/2020 07:08:00 PM

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of July 19, 2020

Monday:
• No major economic releases scheduled.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 and DOW futures are mostly unchanged (fair value).

Oil prices were up slightly over the last week with WTI futures at $40.58 per barrel and Brent at $43.09 barrel.  A year ago, WTI was at $55, and Brent was at $61 - so WTI oil prices are down about 30% year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $2.18 per gallon. A year ago prices were at $2.77 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.59 per gallon year-over-year.

by Calculated Risk on 7/19/2020 05:41:00 PM

The US is now reporting over 700,000 tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).

There were 768,823 test results reported over the last 24 hours.

There were 63,907 positive tests.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.

The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 8.3% (red line).

For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace.com.

And check out COVID Exit Strategy to see how each state is doing.

by Calculated Risk on 7/19/2020 10:22:00 AM

Housing economist Tom Lawler has been sending me his predictions of what the NAR will report for  over 10 years.  And he has graciously allowed me to share his predictions with the readers of this blog.

The table below shows the consensus for each month, Lawler's predictions, and the NAR's initially reported level of sales. 

Lawler hasn't always been closer than the consensus, but usually when there has been a fairly large spread between Lawler's estimate and the "consensus", Lawler has been closer.

Take last month (May 2020): The consensus was 4.10 million SAAR, and Lawler estimated the NAR would report 3.80 million - and the NAR actually reported 3.91 million.

Note that the initial consensus for May was 4.38 million SAAR, but moved down sharply after Lawler released his projections. This happens frequently - analysts change their outlook based on Lawler's projections.

The NAR is scheduled to release Existing Home Sales for June at 10:00 AM, Wednesday, July 22nd.

The consensus is for 4.86 million SAAR in June, up from 3.91 million in May. Tom Lawler estimates the NAR will report sales of 4.65 million SAAR and that inventory will be down about 26% year-over-year. Based on Lawler's estimate, I expect existing home sales to be below the consensus in June.

NOTE: There have been times when Lawler "missed", but then he pointed out an apparent error in the NAR data - and the subsequent revision corrected that error.  As an example, see: The “Curious Case” of Existing Home Sales in the South in April

Over the last 10 years, the consensus average miss was 139 thousand, and  Lawler's average miss was 69 thousand.

Existing Home Sales, Forecasts and NAR Report millions, seasonally adjusted annual rate basis (SAAR)
Month	Consensus	Lawler	NAR reported1
May-10	6.20	5.83	5.66
Jun-10	5.30	5.30	5.37
Jul-10	4.66	3.95	3.83
Aug-10	4.10	4.10	4.13
Sep-10	4.30	4.50	4.53
Oct-10	4.50	4.46	4.43
Nov-10	4.85	4.61	4.68
Dec-10	4.90	5.13	5.28
Jan-11	5.20	5.17	5.36
Feb-11	5.15	5.00	4.88
Mar-11	5.00	5.08	5.10
Apr-11	5.20	5.15	5.05
May-11	4.75	4.80	4.81
Jun-11	4.90	4.71	4.77
Jul-11	4.92	4.69	4.67
Aug-11	4.75	4.92	5.03
Sep-11	4.93	4.83	4.91
Oct-11	4.80	4.86	4.97
Nov-11	5.08	4.40	4.42
Dec-11	4.60	4.64	4.61
Jan-12	4.69	4.66	4.57
Feb-12	4.61	4.63	4.59
Mar-12	4.62	4.59	4.48
Apr-12	4.66	4.53	4.62
May-12	4.57	4.66	4.55
Jun-12	4.65	4.56	4.37
Jul-12	4.50	4.47	4.47
Aug-12	4.55	4.87	4.82
Sep-12	4.75	4.70	4.75
Oct-12	4.74	4.84	4.79
Nov-12	4.90	5.10	5.04
Dec-12	5.10	4.97	4.94
Jan-13	4.90	4.94	4.92
Feb-13	5.01	4.87	4.98
Mar-13	5.03	4.89	4.92
Apr-13	4.92	5.03	4.97
May-13	5.00	5.20	5.18
Jun-13	5.27	4.99	5.08
Jul-13	5.13	5.33	5.39
Aug-13	5.25	5.35	5.48
Sep-13	5.30	5.26	5.29
Oct-13	5.13	5.08	5.12
Nov-13	5.02	4.98	4.90
Dec-13	4.90	4.96	4.87
Jan-14	4.70	4.67	4.62
Feb-14	4.64	4.60	4.60
Mar-14	4.56	4.64	4.59
Apr-14	4.67	4.70	4.65
May-14	4.75	4.81	4.89
Jun-14	4.99	4.96	5.04
Jul-14	5.00	5.09	5.15
Aug-14	5.18	5.12	5.05
Sep-14	5.09	5.14	5.17
Oct-14	5.15	5.28	5.26
Nov-14	5.20	4.90	4.93
Dec-14	5.05	5.15	5.04
Jan-15	5.00	4.90	4.82
Feb-15	4.94	4.87	4.88
Mar-15	5.04	5.18	5.19
Apr-15	5.22	5.20	5.04
May-15	5.25	5.29	5.35
Jun-15	5.40	5.45	5.49
Jul-15	5.41	5.64	5.59
Aug-15	5.50	5.54	5.31
Sep-15	5.35	5.56	5.55
Oct-15	5.41	5.33	5.36
Nov-15	5.32	4.97	4.76
Dec-15	5.19	5.36	5.46
Jan-16	5.32	5.36	5.47
Feb-16	5.30	5.20	5.08
Mar-16	5.27	5.27	5.33
Apr-16	5.40	5.44	5.45
May-16	5.64	5.55	5.53
Jun-16	5.48	5.62	5.57
Jul-16	5.52	5.41	5.39
Aug-16	5.44	5.49	5.33
Sep-16	5.35	5.55	5.47
Oct-16	5.44	5.47	5.60
Nov-16	5.54	5.60	5.61
Dec-16	5.54	5.55	5.49
Jan-17	5.55	5.60	5.69
Feb-17	5.55	5.41	5.48
Mar-17	5.61	5.74	5.71
Apr-17	5.67	5.56	5.57
May-17	5.55	5.65	5.62
Jun-17	5.58	5.59	5.52
Jul-17	5.57	5.38	5.44
Aug-17	5.48	5.39	5.35
Sep-17	5.30	5.38	5.39
Oct-17	5.30	5.60	5.48
Nov-17	5.52	5.77	5.81
Dec-17	5.75	5.66	5.57
Jan-18	5.65	5.48	5.38
Feb-18	5.42	5.44	5.54
Mar-18	5.28	5.51	5.60
Apr-18	5.60	5.48	5.46
May-18	5.56	5.47	5.43
Jun-18	5.45	5.35	5.38
Jul-18	5.43	5.40	5.34
Aug-18	5.36	5.36	5.34
Sep-18	5.30	5.20	5.15
Oct-18	5.20	5.31	5.22
Nov-18	5.19	5.23	5.32
Dec-18	5.24	4.97	4.99
Jan-19	5.05	4.92	4.94
Feb-19	5.08	5.46	5.51
Mar-19	5.30	5.40	5.21
Apr-19	5.36	5.31	5.19
May-19	5.29	5.40	5.34
Jun-19	5.34	5.25	5.27
Jul-19	5.39	5.40	5.42
Aug-19	5.38	5.42	5.49
Sep-19	5.45	5.36	5.38
Oct-19	5.49	5.36	5.46
Nov-19	5.45	5.43	5.35
Dec-19	5.43	5.40	5.54
Jan-20	5.45	5.42	5.46
Feb-20	5.50	5.58	5.77
Mar-20	5.30	5.25	5.27
Apr-20	4.30	4.17	4.33
May-20	4.10	3.80	3.91
Jun-20	4.86	4.65	NA
1NAR initially reported before revisions.

by Calculated Risk on 7/19/2020 08:11:00 AM

The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) reports ("Stats Report"):

1) Overall sales were at 9,508 in June, up from 6,860 in May, and up from 9,313 in June 2019. Sales were up 38.6% from May 2020 (last month), and up 2.1% from June 2019.

2) Active inventory was at 8,792 down from 11,418 in June 2019. That is down 23% year-over-year.

3) Months of supply decreased to 1.51 in June, down from 2.46 in May. This remains low.

Sales are reported at the close of escrow, so these sales were mostly signed in April and May.  As expected, sales rebounded in June. 

by Calculated Risk on 7/18/2020 05:49:00 PM

The US is now reporting over 700,000 tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).

There were 761,771 test results reported over the last 24 hours.

There were 65,180 positive tests.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.

The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 8.6% (red line).

For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace.com.

And check out COVID Exit Strategy to see how each state is doing.

by Calculated Risk on 7/18/2020 08:11:00 AM

The key reports this week are June New and Existing Home Sales.

----- Monday, July 20th -----
No major economic releases scheduled.

----- Tuesday, July 21st -----
8:30 AM ET: Chicago Fed National Activity Index for June. This is a composite index of other data.

----- Wednesday, July 22nd -----
7:00 AM ET: The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

9:00 AM: FHFA House Price Index for May 2019. This was originally a GSE only repeat sales, however there is also an expanded index.

10:00 AM: Existing Home Sales for June from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for 4.86 million SAAR, up from 3.91 million last month.

The graph shows existing home sales from 1994 through the report last month.

Housing economist Tom Lawler expects the NAR to report 4.65 million SAAR.

During the day: The AIA's Architecture Billings Index for June (a leading indicator for commercial real estate).

----- Thursday, July 23rd -----
8:30 AM: The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for a 1.300 million initial claims, unchanged from 1.300 million the previous week.

----- Friday, July 24th -----
10:00 AM: New Home Sales for June from the Census Bureau.

This graph shows New Home Sales since 1963. The dashed line is the sales rate for last month.

The consensus is for 700 thousand SAAR, up from 676 thousand in May.

by Calculated Risk on 7/17/2020 05:57:00 PM

The US is now conducting over 700,000 tests per day. Based on the experience of other countries, the percent positive needs to be well under 5% to really push down new infections, so the US still needs to increase the number of tests per day significantly (or take actions to push down the number of new infections).

There were 851,788 test results reported over the last 24 hours. This is a new record.

There were 77,233 positive tests. This is a new record.

Click on graph for larger image.

This data is from the COVID Tracking Project.

The percent positive over the last 24 hours was 9.1% (red line).

For the status of contact tracing by state, check out testandtrace.com.

by Calculated Risk on 7/17/2020 04:20:00 PM

From housing economist Tom Lawler:

Based on publicly-available local realtor/MLS reports released across the country through today, I project that existing home sales as estimated by the National Association of Realtors ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.65 million in June, up 18.9% from May’s preliminary pace and down 12.6% from last June’s seasonally adjusted pace. Unadjusted sales should show a significantly smaller YOY decline, reflecting this June’s higher business day count than last June’s.

On the inventory front, local realtor/MLS data, as well as data from other inventory trackers, suggest that the inventory of existing homes for sale at the end of June will be down by a whopping 26% from a year earlier.

Finally, local realtor/MLS data suggest that the median US existing single-family home sales price last month was up by about 3.7% from last June.

While not all realtor reports include data on new pending sales – and some that do often revise those data significantly – the limited data available suggest that pending homes sales in June will be up from May, and will probably be up on a YOY basis as well.

CR Note: The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is scheduled to release June existing home sales on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 10:00 AM ET. The consensus is for 4.86 million SAAR.