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Market Update: AUD gold back above $1400oz as Switzerland heads to the polls!
27 November 2014
Poor data in the United States
Before finishing this article, it’s worth quickly commenting on the latest economic data out of the United States, especially as the USD has been so strong of late, and the majority of market participants are predicting a strong US recovery into 2015, with higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve.
Apart from the Q3 GDP print, which beat expectations, it’s been all bad news out of the US this week, which should give pause to anyone getting over-optimistic about the strength and resilience of the US economy.
After all – in the past few days, we’ve seen
• Markit Services PMI - which captures business conditions in the services sector, fall to 56.3 points, down from 57.1 the previous month
• The housing prices index come in flat in September, vs. expectations of a 0.5% rise
• Consumer confidence fall to 88.7 points from 94 the previous month. This was a huge miss to expectations
• Mortgage applications fall 4.3% for the week
• Initial jobless claims rose to 313,000 overnight – much worse than expected
• Personal income growth came in at only 0.2%, below expectations
• Pending home sales fell 1.1% for the month of October
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we saw another incredibly disappointing result for Durable Goods orders ex transportation, which fell 0.9% in October, versus expectations of a 0.5% rise
This is graphed below, showing the year on year change in durable goods orders ex transportation, and you can see how weak it’s been for the past few years, with a declining trend.
https://www.abcbullion.com.au/inves...s-switzerland-heads-to-the-polls#.VHaM4MscS01
