Rover's Weekly Market Brief — 1/12/2018

January 12, 2018 Printer Friendly Printer Friendly

Indices

DJIA: 25,803.00 (+2.00%)

NASDAQ: 7,261.00 (+1.74%)

S&P 500: 2,786.00 (+1.56%)

Commodities

Gold: 1,339.40 (+1.29%)

Copper: 323.30 (+0.11%)

Crude Oil: 64.35 (+4.74%)

Economy

Wholesale inflation fell -0.1% in December for the first decline since August 2016, bringing the yearly rate down to +2.6%, significantly increasing from 2016’s +1.7% yearly rate. Prices for goods were flat in December, but stripping out the volatile food (-0.7%) and energy (0.0%) components brought the inflation rate for goods to +0.2%. Service prices were down -0.2% primarily due to decreases for trade services (e.g. retailing) (-0.6%), and transportation and warehousing services (-0.4%). Excluding the trade, transportation and warehousing components raises service prices to a +0.1% gain for the month.

A +0.4% increase in the cost for shelter made up almost 80% of December’s +0.1% increase in consumer prices, with the core index up +0.3% to its largest increase since January 2017. On a yearly basis, consumer inflation was 2.1% (-0.1% M/M), and core consumer inflation was 1.8% (+0.1% M/M). The December report’s Year in Review for 2017 highlighted accelerating increases vs 2016 for the food index (+1.6% vs -0.2%), and the energy index (+6.9% vs +5.4%), and slowing increases for shelter (+1.8% vs +2.2%) and medical care (+1.8% vs +4.1%). The review also noted that the education index was up +2.0%, for the smallest yearly increase in the index’s history, and that there were consecutive yearly declines for airline fares (-4.0%), apparel (-1.6%), and household furnishings (-0.8%).


Retail sales increased for the fourth month in a row with a +0.4% increase in December, and November sales were revised upward from a +0.8% to a +0.9% increase. December 2017 sales were up +5.4% vs December 2016, and total yearly sales for 2017 were up 4.2%, marking the largest increase in three years. Sales increased significantly for nonstore (i.e. online) retailers (+1.2%), building supplies (+1.2%), restaurants (+0.7%), and furniture stores (+0.6%), but dropped for “miscellaneous” retailers (-2.9%), leisure activity retailers (-1.6%) and department stores (-1.1%). On a yearly basis, sales increased strongly for nonstore retailers (+12.7%), building supplies (+9.9%), and furniture stores (+9.9%).

Upcoming Economic Reports:

Wednesday January 17 – Industrial Production

Thursday January 18 – Housing Starts

Earnings Calendar:

 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Straight Path
Coms
(STRP)
UnitedHealth
Group
(UNH)
Bank of
America
(BAC)
IBM
(IBM)
Schlumberger
(SLB)
Nobility
Homes
(NOBH)
Citigroup
(C)
Goldman Sachs
Groiup
(GS)
Morgan
Stanley
(MS)
Sun Trust
Banks
(STI)






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