Wall Street Greek: Daily Business News - Durable Goods & Home Sales Key

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Our daily business news report highlights stronger than expected Durable Goods Orders in July, better than expected New Home Sales, and also Mortgage Activity that defies a rising weekly mortgage rate.

We expect you'll enjoy today's copy, perhaps sweetened by a sprinkle of tetanus infection in my left heel. Last evening I stepped on a nail (a tac really, but nail sounds harder), and without health insurance, I asked Twitter followers what they thought I should do now... Such is the life of Mango, ex-health insurance... God help health care town-hallers when the tetanus infected start showing up with lockjaw, but growling and slobbering just the same. Watch out, here I come!

Daily Business News

Durable Goods Orders

Durable Goods Orders jumped 4.9% in July, driven by transportation. The gain compared against June's 1.3% decline (revised from -2.5%). July's big number even beat economists views for a 2.5% gain for the first month of the third quarter (read into Q3 GDP).

July's gain marked the third increase in the last four months, offering more sign that the economy has found traction. Excluding transportation, orders still rose by 0.8%, and ex-defense, new orders increased by 4.3%.

Mortgage Activity

With mortgage rates holding relatively low, mortgage activity gained again this past week ending on August 21. The average contract interest rate on 30-year fixed rate mortgages edged higher to 5.24%, from 5.15%. 15-year fixed rate mortgages moved to 4.58%, from 4.52% in the prior week. The rate increase was not enough to stymie mortgage activity though, as the Market Composite Index improved 7.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis. Purchase Applications edged 1% higher, while the Refinance Index gained 12.7%.

Barring some stimulant we're missing here, the most likely reason behind the contradictory data is timing. We do not watch rates on a daily basis here, but we expect there were enough days of attractive incentive to spur the sharp rise, and on an absolute scale, mortgage rates are low enough to spur interest. Economic recovery also drives anomalous improvement like this, and the four-week moving average for overall activity is up 3.5%.

New Home Sales

New Home Sales in July, at 433K, marked a 9.6% increase over June's revised annual rate of 395K. Bloomberg's consensus of economists was only looking for a pace of 390K, so more good news for real estate enthusiasts. As a matter of fact, The Greek's own Michael Douville is starting to look prescient to all you player haters out there who condemned him for forecasting real estate recovery this year. Look for our revenge video on YouTube sometime soon... Imagine the day Ben Bernanke uses the term, "player hater," and it's acceptable. One can only dream... but for now, you have "The Greek."

New home inventory experienced a dramatic cut in July, to 7.5 months, down a full month from June. To really grasp how much better things are getting, consider that new home inventory has not been this low since April of 2007.

Petroleum Status Report

Keeping with summer driving season norm, gasoline stores experienced a draw of 1.7 million barrels in the week ending on August 21st. Crude oil stocks saw a draw of 0.2 million. What's funny is that while economic data comes in fine and dandy, oil is giving back ground today. It's that confounding dollar playing tricks on you again, since a strengthening economy provides support for it as well... at least until the inflation bug bites. This confusion is why we keep all those annoying economists around...

Corporate EPS Schedule

Wednesday's schedule includes Aluminum Corporation of China (NYSE: ACH), Angeion (Nasdaq: ANGN), Brown Shoe Company (NYSE: BWS), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (NYSE: CM), Charming Shoppes (Nasdaq: CHRS), CNOOC, Inc. (NYSE: CEO), Coldwater Creek (Nasdaq: CWTR), Concurrent Computer (Nasdaq: CCUR), Dollar Tree (Nasdaq: DLTR), DSW, Inc. (NYSE: DSW), eLong, Inc. (Nasdaq: LONG), Guess (NYSE: GES), HEICO (NYSE: HEI), Isle of Capri Casinos (Nasdaq: ISLE), Jo-Ann Stores (NYSE: JAS), Kirkland’s (Nasdaq: KIRK), New York & Co. (NYSE: NWY), Powershares Dynamic Software (NYSE: PSJ), Sigma Designs (Nasdaq: SIGM), SWS Group (NYSE: SWS), TIVO (Nasdaq: TIVO), Trintech (Nasdaq: TTPA), Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM) and more.