| Released On 3/26/2012 10:00:00 AM For Feb, 2012 | |||||||||||||||
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This is the 13th of the last 15 economic reports to miss as we move out of the easily manipulated seasonal adjustment period.
More from Bloomberg...
"Was the early strength this year in housing data a head fake? That's the question following last week's disappointing sales data for new homes and existing homes and today's likewise disappointing data on pending sales. The pending home sales index, which tracks contract signings for existing homes, fell 0.5 percent in February vs Econoday's consensus for a gain of 1.0 percent. Three of four regions show monthly declines including the South which is by far the largest housing region.
A further risk is that contracts don't always make it to closing due to credit and appraisal snags, factors that increase the prospect for approaching declines in final sales. The winter's mild weather was supposed to have been a big plus for the housing sector including existing home sales but the positive effect appears to have been limited to January. The Dow, which jumped at the opening, has now steadied in early reaction to today's report."
To answer Bloomberg's first question, I believe it is as many have suspected, the government had been using winter seasonal adjustments that they seemingly picked out of thin air to come up with economic data that looked a lot stronger then non-governmental sources otherwise indicated.
Without the seasonal adjustment fudge factor (allowing the government to virtually pick any target and manipulate the numbers with seasonal adjustments), the real data is starting to come out and it's not as pretty as it looked earlier this year as the trend in mcaro-economic data moves from very positive to suspiciously negative.
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