Morning Report: Median home ages climb

Vital Statistics:

			Last	Change
S&P futures			2842	-11.5
Eurostoxx index			386.37	-3.68
Oil (WTI)			67.28	0.48
10 Year Government Bond Yield				2.90%
30 Year fixed rate mortgage				4.58%

Stocks are lower this morning on overseas weakness. Bonds and MBS are up on the risk-off trade. 

Inflation at the consumer level remains under control, with the Consumer Price Index rising 0.2% MOM and 2.9% YOY. Stripping out food and energy, it rose 0.2% / 2.4%. A big driver of the increase was shelter, adding 0.3%. Food rose slightly while energy declined.

The EU and the US are scheduled to meet to discuss ways to bring down tariffs. The US would like to see more soybean and energy exports to the Continent, and is hoping to derail a potential pipeline of natural gas from Russia to Germany. 

The Turkish Lira is in freefall, and there is discussion of how that will affect Euro banks, specifically BBVA, BNP Paribas, and Unicredito. Yields on the Turkish 10 year bond have hit 20%. This is causing a flight to quality which is benefiting US bonds. While Turkey is probably not big enough to cause any sort of contagion, it could cause the ECB to go a little slower on policy normalization. Note Trump is stirring the pot, threatening to double tariffs. 

Fannie Mae has also announced forbearance policies for borrowers affected by the California wildfires. Borrowers can get up to 12 months forbearance without penalty if they live in FEMA-designated disaster areas. 

The average age of a home is 37 years old, according to the American Communities Survey. This really speaks to how weak housing starts have been since the real estate bubble burst. Pre-bubble they averaged 1.5 million a year. 

Slower delivery times are beginning to affect manufacturers (and their earnings reports). Ultimately, bottlenecks are usually inflationary. This is also the downside of making supply chains elongated and lean - capacity is maxed so meeting incremental demand requires investment that many firms are reluctant to make. The good news is that demand is strong, but the downside is that this is yet one more inflationary issue. The odd thing is that capacity utilization is sitting at 78%, which is about the historical average.