What Does 1.6 Mean To You

October Consumer Prices Match Analyst Estimates

October Producer Price Index - PPI and Consumer Confidence Index - CPI Miss Estimates. Roundtable Discussion with John Silvia of Wachovia and Carl Tannenbaum of LaSalle Bank.

Housing Starts Dropped to 14 Year Low in September, More Than Forecast. Reaction with Brian Bethune of Global Insight; Beige Book Today; CPI Reaction.

The August consumer confidence index fell -7.5% to 105.0 : after a downward revision to July. The decline was expected given the injuries to the equity markets as lower gasoline prices presumably provided some offset.

The labor differential (jobs “plentiful” less “hard to get”) fell to a strong 7.8 as 1 year inflation expectations held at 5.1%, more than twice the annual growth in CPI.

The confidence index is volatile as the decline follows a 7% rise in July. The mood after absorbing the data appears to be affecting equities more than bonds with the Dow off 86 points in early morning trading. Mortgages appear to be in a bright mood this morning with FNMA MBS up 3 ticks (3/32) so far. Yesterday say a slow but persistent rally to the closing bell.

Consumers Likely Lost Confidence as Stocks Fell. University of Michigan’s Consumer Confidence Index May Have Fallen to 88 from 90.4 in July

Consumers Likely Lost Confidence as Stocks Fell. University of Michigan’s Consumer Confidence Index May Have Fallen to 88 from 90.4 in July

Play Video

Market Outlook: CPI Numbers Released, Bernanke’s Testimony Bloomberg-Clip - (BLOOM-Clip) Jul. 18, 2007. 08:00 AM EST Analysis and Discussion with Brian Bethune, Economist at Global Insight; June CPI - Core 0.2% Falls in Line with Estimates; Key Points Expected in Bernanke’s Testimony

[audio:http://www.consumermortgagereports.com/Audio/Consumer-Price-Index-CPI-Numbers-Released.mp3]

What is the Consumer Price Index - CPI?
A consumer price index (CPI) along with a population census, is one of the two most important products of national statistical offices. It is a statistical estimate of the movement of the prices of goods and services bought for consumption purposes by households. Its computation uses price data collected for a sample of goods and services from a sample of sales outlets in a sample of locations for a sample of times and estimates of the shares of the different expenditures in the total covered by the index which are usually based upon expenditure data obtained for sampled periods from a sample of households. Although some of the sampling is done using a sampling frame and probabilistic sampling methods, much is done in a commonsense way (purposive sampling) so that confidence intervals cannot be estimated. Nevertheless, the sampling variance is normally ignored, since a single estimate is required in most of the purposes for which the index is used. The two main uses are: a measure of inflation, and the indexation (or evaluation) of wages, salaries, pensions or regulated or contracted prices. definition continued @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index