BIG Bubbles! National House Price Index Up 6.3% Year-over-Year in April Despite Mortgage Rates Up 147% Under Biden (San Diego Fast Growing At 10.3% YoY, Portlandia Slowest Growing)

This isn’t a tiny bubble!

S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for April (“April” is a 3-month average of February, March and April closing prices). The pace of appreciation has slowed from the previous month, reflecting the toll of 7% mortgage rates and low inventory.

This release includes prices for 20 individual cities, two composite indices (for 10 cities and 20 cities) and the monthly National index.

From S&P S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index Break Previous Month’s All-Time High in April 2024

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 6.3% annual gain for April, down from a 6.5% annual gain in the previous month. The 10-City Composite saw an annual increase of 8.0%, down from an 8.3% annual increase in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a year-over-year increase of 7.2%, dropping from a 7.5% increase in the previous month. San Diego continued to report the highest annual gain among the 20 cities in April with a 10.3% increase this month, followed by New York and Chicago, with increases of 9.4% and 8.7%, respectively. Portland once again held the lowest rank this month for the smallest year-over-year growth, with a 1.7% annual increase in April.
…
The U.S. National Index, the 20-City Composite, and the 10-City Composite upward trends decelerated from last month, with pre-seasonality adjustment increases of 1.2%, 1.36% and 1.38%, respectively.

After seasonal adjustment, the U.S. National Index and 10-City Composite posted the same month-over-month increase of 0.3% and 0.5% respectively as last month, while the 20-City reported a monthly increase of 0.4%.

“For the second consecutive month, we’ve seen our National Index jump at least 1% over its previous all-time high,” says Brian D. Luke, Head of Commodities, Real & Digital Assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “2024 is closely tracking the strong start observed last year, where March and April posted the largest rise seen prior to a slowdown in the summer and fall. Heading into summer, the market is at an all-time high, once again testing its resilience against the historically more active time of the year.

“Thirteen markets are currently at all-time highs and San Diego reigns supreme once again, topping annual returns for the last six months. The Northeast is the best performing market for the previous nine months, with New York rising 9.4% annually. Sustained outperformance of the Northeast market was last observed in 2011. For the decade that followed, the West and the South held the top posts for performance. It’s now been over a year since we’ve seen the top region come from the South or the West.

Of course, Fed Money Printing is helping drive home price growth. Perhaps too much!

Here is Jerome Powell, Chairman of The Fed Bubble Blowing Machine!!

Biden’s Amerika! Top 1% Now Have Higher Share Of Household Wealth Than Entire Middle Class (Struggling Households At 46%)

Now you know why Joe Biden has fund raisers in Hollywood and New York where the elites (the top 1%) live. Biden is the President of The Elites, not the middle class.

How bad it is? The top 1% now have more household wealth than the entire middle class. Note that the recent surge occurred under Trump, but Biden is doing nothing about it.

Further evidence? 46% of households are struggling.

In terms of housing prices, home prices are growing FASTER than average hourly earnings. Again!

Politicians. You can’t trust ANY of them with our money. Or a cookout.

Here is New Yprk Senator Chuck Schumer posing as a middle class American cooking gray hamburgers at super low heat with cheese on top of raw meat. What a fraud!

Biden Shrugged! US Economy Actually Lost -408k Jobs In May (Initial Claims Surge To 10-Month Highs As California Joblessness Soars)

Joe Biden is a dishonest politician, so it is no wonder that he ignores actual data. Like claiming that crime is down under his leadership, when it is actually large cities like New York and Los Angeles not reporting their crime data to the FBI.

Take the May jobs numbers. The BLS reports that 272k jobs were added. However, the more accurate Household Survery reported a loss of -408k jobs in May.

While the Establishment Survey did indeed report that 272K “jobs” were added, this number also included multiple job holders; stripping those out, we get that the actual number of “employed” workers plunged by -408K.

On the jobless claims side, the number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the first time surged last week to 242k (up from 229k and well above the 225k exp). That is the highest since August 2023…

Source: Bloomberg

On an NSA basis, claims exploded higher.

The last three weeks have seen the largest surge in claims since January…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably this surge is very VERY similar to what we saw last year (but not the prior few years, so not a ‘seasonal’ pattern per se)…

Source: Bloomberg

The surge in NSA claims was driven by California…

California leads the nation in initial jobless claims, thanks to Newsom’s $20 per hour minimum wage law for fast food restaurants. This one’s gonna hurt Californians for a long, long time.

Biden and Newsom WISH they were Atlas.

Mortgage Applications Rise 15.6% From Previous Week, But Purchase Applications Down -12% Over Past Year

Well, it was the first week of June. Mortgage applications usually peak in May, so we are on the historic “dark side of the moon” for mortgage demand.

Mortgage applications increased 15.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Applications Survey for the week ending June 7, 2024.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 15.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 26 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 9 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 19 percent compared with the previous week and was 12 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

Beware of getting too excited about the19% WoW increase. It is 19% off an extremely low number.

The Refinance Index increased 28 percent from the previous week and was 28 percent higher than the same week one year ago.

This charts sums up the seasonal component to prepays.

The Wreck Of The US Middle Class: America’s Paychecks Bigger Than 40 Years Ago, But Purchasing Power About The Same (Credit Card Delinquencies Highest Since 1991)

Under Bidenomics and Fed monetary “policies”, we now have the wreck of the US middle class.

To begin with, America’s paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but purchasing power of those larger paychecks is about the sames as it was 40 years ago. Great job Washington DC!!! … NOT!!!!

Meanwhile, credit card delinquencies are at the highest level since 1991.

Americans are feeling extreme financial stress.

Coping with Bidennomics and The Fed has been most difficult. Especially if you listened to Biden’s D-Day speech (almost stolen word-for-word from a Ronald Reagan speech).

Demented Joe Biden being led by the hand by his money-grubbing wife. “Joe, you will be here soon!”

Going Down! Economic Surprise Index Slumps In Election Year To Lowest Under Bidenomics (Economic Confidence Has Been TERRIBLE Under Biden)

The US economy is going down.

2024 hasn’t been a good year for Bidenomics. The Economic Surprise Index is falling to its lowest point in years.

The economic confidence index has been terrible since Covid and Biden’s Reign of Ecoomic Error.

We need to give Biden the hook!’

And I don’t want The Lizard Queen either.

Boom, Boom! ATL Fed Nowcast Plunges To 1.8% As Consumer Spending Estimate Collapses (Real Estate Construction Spending Leads Collapse In GDP)

Boom boom!

ATL Fed Nowcast plunges to 1.8% as their consumer spending estimate collapses – less than 3 weeks ago, they were forecasting 4.2% growth for Q2; a recession likely began in April.

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2024 is 1.8 percent on June 3, down from 2.7 percent on May 31. After recent releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcasts for annualized second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real private fixed investment growth declined from 2.6 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, to 1.8 percent and 1.5 percent.

fff

Since I used The Animal’s version of the John Lee Hooker great tune “Boom Boom,” I will use another Animals tune for Joe Biden’s penchant for sniffing little girls. “Baby Let Me Take You Home.”

The Animals band. Not to be confused with the animals in the Biden Administration and Congress.

Job openings in April 2024 dipped to 8,059. Notice the trend (orange line) is below the trend set prior to Covid (red line).

Krugman’s Grossly Misleading Inflation Victory Declaration … BUT Purchasing Power Of US Dollar Is Down -16.5% Under Biden (Food Prices UP 21%, Home Prices UP 34%, Used Car/Truck Prices UP 17.7%)

Call it Washington DC soullessness.

Back in 2023, Socialist Paul Krugman declared that “the war on inflation is over!!! “We” won, at very little cost.” I love when elitists claim “We won!” since clearly 99% of Americans lost since food, housing and car prices up are double digits under Biden.

The problem is that food, energy, shelter, and used cars/trucks are a huge part of Americans consumption basket.

Under Biden, food CPI is up 23%. Home prices are up 34% and used cars/truck prices are up 17.7%.

A note to Paul Krugman, YOU may have won, but the rest of Americans lost. Consumer purchasing power of the US Dollar is DOWN 16.5% Under Biden.

Here is where we stand under Bidenomics.

Ask Joe if he cares.

Chicago PMI Screams RECESSION! Falls To Cycle Low Of 35.4, Back To 2008 Recession Levels (Copper Prices Rising!)

Not so Sweet Home Chicago!

After unexpectedly slumping last month to 37.9, the Chicago PMI index cratered even more unexpectedly in May, when it defied hopes of a rebound to 41.5, and instead tumbled even more, sliding to a cycle low of 35.4 which was not only below the lowest estimate, but was staggeringly low. To get a sense of just how low, the last two times it printed here was during the peak of the covid and global financial crises…

… which seems to suggest that at least according to Chicago-based purchasing managers, the economy is in a depression.

This is how the final number looked relative to expectations.

Looking at the report we find the following:

Business barometer fell at a faster pace; signaling contraction
New orders fell at a faster pace; signaling contraction
Employment fell at a faster pace; signaling contraction
Inventories fell at a faster pace; signaling contraction
Supplier deliveries fell at a slower pace; signaling contraction
Production fell at a slower pace; signaling contraction
Order backlogs fell at a faster pace; signaling contraction

Did nothing rise? One thing did:

Prices paid rose at a slower pace; signaling expansion

So we have not just a depression, but a stagflationary depression in which everything else is going to hell, except prices: they keep on rising.

And while it is unclear what has prompted this unprecedented bearishness (the surely negative contribution from Boeing is likely to blame for a substantial portion of the apocalyptic outlook), one thing is certain: Goldman will have to come up with even more goalseeked surveys that explain away reality and tell us how purchasing managers really should feel…

On the good news front, REAL Gross Domester Income rose to 1.5%.

As copper prices keep on rising. Which is bad news for Biden’s shift to EVs! (Once again, Biden is driven around in gas guzzling Chevy Tahoes/Suburbans and owns a Chevy Corvette). There isn’t enough copper production to build the EVs that Biden wants.

Biden drove his Chevy to the STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE and the reserve was dry. And them good old Democrats were drinkin’ whiskey and rye after a New York Jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, despite there not being any laws broken.

I have testified and sat through many trials in New York city and have never seen a court case quite like the one the Trump lost with the Judge effectively telling the jury to find Trump guilty.

US Pending Home Sales Plunge To Record Lows In April As Rates Rose (After Terrible Mortgage Report)

With the terrible mortgage applications index from Wednedsay, we are seeing US pending home sales crashiing. As Joe Biden handles the economy his way.

After an unexpected jump in March, pending home sales were expected to drop 1.0% MoM in April as mortgage rates pushed back above 7.00% and stayed there.

Well, the analysts had the direction right but magnitude was way off as pending home sales plunged 7.7% MoM – the biggest drop since Feb 2021 (and below the lowest estimate), leaving sales down 0.7% YoY…

Source: Bloomberg

This is the 29th straight month of YoY declines for non-seasonally-adjusted pending home sales.

This MoM decline pushed the Pending Home Sales Index back to record lows…

Source: Bloomberg

The Midwest saw the biggest drop in pending sales, down 9.5% in April, followed by declines of 8.5% and 7.6% in the West and South, respectively. Contract signings in the Northeast fell 3.5%.

“The impact of escalating interest rates throughout April dampened home buying, even with more inventory in the market,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

“But the Federal Reserve’s anticipated rate cut later this year should lead to better conditions, with improved affordability and more supply.”

All driven by affordability crisis as mortgage rates surged back above 7.00%…

Source: Bloomberg

“The prospect of measurable home price declines appears minimal,” Yun said.

“The few markets experiencing price declines will be viewed as second-chance opportunities for buyers to enter the market if those regions continue to add jobs.”

As a reminder, the pending-sales report tends to be a leading indicator of sales of previously owned homes, because houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold.