U.S. automobile and real estate sales decline despite higher consumer confidence and low unemployment as of October 2018.

Fiona Sydney

2018-10-27 09:34:00 Sat ET

U.S. automobile and real estate sales decline despite higher consumer confidence and low unemployment as of October 2018. This slowdown arises from the current U.S. interest rate hike that helps wean the economy off near-zero rates. High costs of capital squeeze the automobile and real estate industries after the prior decade of monetary stimulus. The most expensive U.S. consumer purchases are cars and houses, and these consumer industries are quite sensitive to the cyclical ebbs and flows of credit supply expansion. Recent U.S. mortgage rates reach 5% for the first time since 2011, and thus new home sales tumble 5.5% in 2018Q3 to the lowest level in about 2 years.

Residential home sale declines are double-digits and quite severe in the northeast and west U.S. states. In light of higher mortgage rates and home prices, financial economists start to consider rental properties more cost-effective than residential home purchases. Meanwhile, most Case-Shiller home price indices begin to show the current trend that home price gains decelerate from March 2018 to September 2018. Wall Street seems to impose hefty penalties on automobile and real estate stocks. Many homebuilder ETFs such as XHB, TOL, and KBH have plunged about 30% year-to-date since January 2018. Also, several automobile stocks from Ford to GM show 25%+ price declines in the same time frame. The latter auto industry further suffers higher production costs due to Trump tariffs. These bearish traces suggest the inconvenient truth that the U.S. economy may have gone beyond the peak of real business cycles with low inflation and robust employment and capital investment growth.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Disruptive innovators compete against luck by figuring out why customers hire products and services to accomplish specific jobs.

John Fourier

2020-05-14 12:35:00 Thursday ET

Disruptive innovators compete against luck by figuring out why customers hire products and services to accomplish specific jobs.

Disruptive innovators can better compete against luck by figuring out why customers hire products and services to accomplish jobs. Clayton Christensen, T

+See More

Former LSE Director Howard Davies shares his ingenious insights into the new Basel 4 accord.

Chanel Holden

2018-01-01 06:30:00 Monday ET

Former LSE Director Howard Davies shares his ingenious insights into the new Basel 4 accord.

As former chairman of the British Financial Services Authority and former director of the London School of Economics, Howard Davies shares his ingenious ins

+See More

President Trump promises a great trade deal with China as Americans mull over mid-term elections.

Laura Hermes

2018-11-13 12:30:00 Tuesday ET

President Trump promises a great trade deal with China as Americans mull over mid-term elections.

President Trump promises a great trade deal with China as Americans mull over mid-term elections. President Trump wants to reach a trade accord with Chinese

+See More

Stock Synopsis: Life insurers emphasize profit margins over sales growth rates.

Fiona Sydney

2024-05-27 03:23:34 Monday ET

Stock Synopsis: Life insurers emphasize profit margins over sales growth rates.

Stock Synopsis: Life insurers emphasize profit margins over sales growth rates. We review and analyze the recent market share data in the U.S. life insur

+See More

Tony Robbins suggests that one has to be able to make money during sleep hours in order to reach financial freedom.

Laura Hermes

2019-04-27 16:41:00 Saturday ET

Tony Robbins suggests that one has to be able to make money during sleep hours in order to reach financial freedom.

Tony Robbins suggests that one has to be able to make money during sleep hours in order to reach financial freedom. Most of our jobs and life experiences tr

+See More

Better corporate governance through worldwide convergence toward Berle-Means stock ownership dispersion

Fiona Sydney

2023-12-05 09:25:00 Tuesday ET

Better corporate governance through worldwide convergence toward Berle-Means stock ownership dispersion

Better corporate ownership governance through worldwide convergence toward Berle-Means stock ownership dispersion   Abstract We design a model

+See More