Weekly Economic & Financial Commentary: More strong housing numbers

Wells Fargo Research Team Wells Fargo

U.S. Review

More strong housing numbers

Existing home sales rose 2.4% to a 6.0-million unit annual pace. The surge in sales further depleted inventories and pushed prices sharply higher.
The IHS Markit Purchasing Managers’ survey noted that manufacturing conditions improved in September.
New home sales soared 4.8% to a 1.011-million unit pace, marking the strongest sales pace since September 2006.
Durable goods orders were stronger than the 0.4% headline gain suggests. Core nondefense capital goods orders rose 1.8%, and are up at a 22.7% pace over the past three months.

Global Review

Eurozone recovery threatened by surging COVID cases

Surging new covid-19 cases across europe have threatened the continent’s economic recovery. Daily new cases are now above the peak seen in march/april, although this does not account for differences in testing.
Against this backdrop, eurozone september pmi indices were closely scrutinized by market participants this week. The services pmi showed further weakness, falling into contraction territory at 47.6.
Elsewhere, the bank of mexico cut its overnight interbank interest rate 25 bps to 4.25%. most forecasters in the bloomberg survey expected the cut.

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