Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

The initial unemployment claims were released today confirming the trend toward higher unemployment.  Initial Unemployment Claims is a measure of the number of persons whom filed for unemployment benefits for the first time in the prior week.  This provides an early look at what our unemployment rate may look like for the month.  This weeks forecasted number called for 392k, but the actual headline number came in at 429k.  This is a large jump in the number of unemployed and has increased the 4 week moving average to 406.5k from the previous weeks 396.25k.  The 4 week moving average smoothes out the distortions in the numbers and provide a trend.  Currently the 4wk moving average has been trending up, showing that our unemployment rate should be notching up again as well.  Last weeks number was revised from 403k to 404k which is one of the smallest revisions we have seen in a while.  Again, we need to keep our eyes on the revisions.

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims

This week the Initial Unemployment Claims, which measures the number of persons who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time, was worse than forecasted (as always).  The forecasted number was 394k and the actual headline number came in at 403k.  I make the distinction of headline number as it is the first release of the number, unfortunately the one most paid attention too (instead of the revised number).  Last weeks number was revised up from 412k to 416k edging the delta to 4k from last weeks 3k.   Given this, we can possibly expect revisions for this weeks number to be conservatively 406k.   The 4 week moving average moved up from 391k to 396k which shows a trend higher for the past few weeks.  

Weekly Fund Flows

This weeks fund flows report showed what seems to be major confusion in the domestic stock market (based on the past few weeks trend).  Last weeks number for domestic outflows was revised to a -$644 million dollars (hundreds of millions worse than what was reported the week prior), but this weeks domestic stock flows showed a in-flow of $495 million dollars.  Foreign stocks saw a reduction of in-flows bringing this weeks in-flows to $340 million dollars.  Taxable Bonds saw in-flows of $3.581 billion dollars (still major piling into taxable bonds) and Municipal bonds (with 21 weeks of selling) had  out-flows of $1.167 billion dollars.  

Weekly Unofficial Problem Bank List

CalculatedRisk released its "Unofficial Problem Bank List" this week with 976 institutions on the list.  There were 4 removals and 2 additions this week.  The FDIC failed bank list had no banks listed this week as failures, most likely due to the Easter holiday close on friday.  So we have yet to see if we have any banks failed from last week, they will be deferred to next week.  The 976 institutions have an asset value of $422.2 billion dollars.  Check out the article at CalculatedRisk by clicking here.

State Chg IL -3 MD +1 TX +1 UT -1

Weekly M1/M2 Changes

This weeks M1 money supply (includes Currency, traveler's checks, demand deposits and other checkable deposits) decreased by -1.06% from 1903.6 billion in the previous month to 1883.7 billion this month.  M2 money supply (includes M1 plus retail Money Market Mutual Funds, savings and small time deposits) increased by 0.06% from 8922.4 billion in the previous month to 8928.1 billion this month.  M2 continues to rise week over week.  Year-over-Year M1 expanded by 9.74% and M2 has expanded 4.53%.

This Weeks POMO Purchases

This week the FED performed 3 POMO (Permanent Open Market Operations) purchases for; 2 billion, 6.678 billion and 1.5 billion.  This brings the total since November 3rd 2010 (when the FED announced the printing of $600 billion dollars by June 30th 2011) to $557.484 billion dollars and since August 17th 2010 to $621.944 billion dollars.