Economic Reports - Pending Home Sales and Personal Income and Outlays

Economic Reports

Monday offered two economic reports, Pending Home Sales and Personal Income and Outlays data for February. We cover both briefly here for you.

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Economic Reports - Pending Home Sales & Personal Income & Outlays

Pending Home Sales February

Contrasting against last week's housing data, Pending Home Sales offered good news today for the month of February. The Pending Home Sales Index rose 2.1%, to 90.8 in February. Last week's data marked contract closings, but this report covers new contract signings, which is a forward looking indicator for future sales. Even so, the Pending Home Sales Index was still down 8.2% from last February. The National Association of Realtors focused attention to the fact that the trend line shows rise since last June. Regionally, we saw growth in all segments except the Northeast, where an excessively snowy winter likely played a role in limiting foot traffic.

Personal Income & Outlays February

The Personal Income & Outlays Report is watched mainly for its consumer spending data and its price gauge. Both those data points offered intriguing information Monday too. Personal Outlays increased 0.7% in February, against economists' consensus expectations for a 0.6% rise. The increase came on a prior month revised higher count, so it got no benefit from revision. However, real PCE, excluding price changes, only increased 0.3%. Thus, price drove much of the change. That was seen in the 0.2% increase in the Core PCE Price Index and the 0.4% increase in the price index including food and energy prices. Personal Income rose 0.3%, less than the 0.4% expectation by economists and against the 1.2% revised growth seen in January.

Article should interest investors in Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), TD Bank (NYSE: TD), PNC Bank (NYSE: PNC), State Street (NYSE: STT), Janus (NYSE: JNS), T. Rowe Price (Nasdaq: TROW), General Electric (NYSE: GE), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), Alcoa (NYSE: AA), American Express (NYSE: AXP), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), DuPont (NYSE: DD), Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Kraft (NYSE: KFT), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), 3M (NYSE: MMM), Merck (NYSE: MRK), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), AT&T (NYSE: T), Travelers (NYSE: TRV), United Technologies (NYSE: UTX), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM).

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