Existing Home Sales in April rose by 2.9% to a 4.68 million annual pace, following a revised 4.55 million pace reported in March, originally reported at 4.57.  Existing Home Sales were pegged at 4.85 million in April of 2008, showing a 3.5% decline over the year.  The national median existing-home price for all housing types was $170,200 in April, down from the $175,000 median in March, which is 15.4% below 2008.  Regionally, existing-home sales in the Northeast increased by 11.6% to an annual pace of 770,000 in April, with a median price of $237,400.  Sales in Midwest fell by 2.0% to 1.00 million with a median price of $138,800.  In the South, existing-home sales increased by 1.8% to an annual pace of 1.74 million with a median price of $148,000. Existing-home sales in the West also showed an improvement, by 3.5%, to an annual rate of 1.17

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Yesterday's release of Crude Inventories informed that U.S. commercial crude oil inventories stand at 370.6 million barrels, after increasing by 3.9 million barrels from the week ending 04/17, above the upper boundary of the average range for this time of  year. Total motor gasoline inventories increased by 0.8 million barrels last week, and are also above the upper boundary of the average range. 

Initial Claims for the week ending 4/18 increased to 640,000, less than the expected 643,00, following 613,000 for the previous week, originally reported at 610,000, surpassing the 600,000 threshold for the 12th consecutive week.  The 4-week moving average was 646,750, a decrease of 4,250 from the previous week's unrevised average of 651,000.  Factoring in the expanded size of the labor force since the recession of the early 1980s, as a proportion of the work force, the insured employment rate is 4.6%, up

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We just got May existing home sales data from the National Association of Realtors. Here's what the numbers looked like ...* Sales climbed 2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.99 million in May from 4.89 million in April. That was slightly better than the average forecast of 4.95 million home sales. Sales were down 15.9% from the year-earlier reading of 5.93 million.* By region, sales rose 4.6% in the Northeast, 5.5% in the Midwest, and 2% in the West. They fell 0.5% in the South. By property type, sales climbed 1.6% in the single-family market and 5.5% in the condo arena. * The supply of homes for sale dipped 1.4% to 4.49 million units in May from 4.55 million in April, but climbed from 4.378 million a year earlier. On a months supply at current sales pace basis, inventory dipped to 10.8 months from ...

MondayEconomic: Leading Inds (0.0%)Earnings: Campbell’s (CPB), Excel Maritime (EXM), Lowe’s (LOW), Perfect World (PWRD), DryShips (DRYS)TuesdayEconomic: PPI & Core (0.0%, 0.2%)Earnings: AutoZone (AZO), China Energy (CSUN), Home Depot (HD), Target (TGT), Analog Devices (ADI), Hewlett (HPQ), Intuit (INTU)WednesdayEconomic: Weekly Crude, FOMC MinutesEarnings: BJ’s (BJ), Ross (ROST), Solarfun (SOLF), Tsakos (TNP), Bristow (BRS), Gymboree (GYMB), Netease (NTES), Network Apps (NTAP), PETsMART (PETM), Salesforce (CRM)ThursdayEconomic: Weekly Claims (370K)Earnings: AnnTaylor (ANN), Barnes & Noble (BKS), Children’s Place (PLCE), Dick’s (DKS), Gamestop (GME), Patterson (PDCO), Toro (TTC), Trina Solar (TSL), Aeropostale (ARO), Gap (GPS), Verigy (VRGY), Zumiez (ZUMZ)FridayEconomic: Existing Home Sales (4.85M)Earnings: NAhttp://stockweb.blogspot.com/atom.xml