News you can use - Boomer Foster Feb 20, 2023

Hello friends,

Hot off the press, we have a new edition of News You Can Use with Boomer Foster. Boomer Foster is the President of General Brokerage of Long & Foster Real Estate. Here is his take on the financial news from last week. As usual, the transcript is below the video. I hope this is useful to you.

Good afternoon, everyone!  Last week on Wall Street was a bit of a mixed bag as investors are struggling with stronger-than-expected economic data that has been coming out lately. We spoke about the jobs numbers last week, and the January CPI report just revealed that inflation is up 6.4% year over year and up .5% month over month. This isn’t giving investors much hope that the Fed will start to become more dovish in the coming months. Obviously, the situation is fluid, and more information will come out that will affect the Fed’s decisions to hike rates further. On Wednesday, the Fed will release the minutes from its last meeting, which will reveal more of their ultimate intentions. The Existing Home Sales report will come out tomorrow, and then preliminary GDP sales will be released on Thursday, which will give us a clearer picture of the state of the economy. 30-year fixed rates went up for the second week in a row, from 6.12% to 6.32%.  In our industry, most major indicators are down year over year, but the big issue that we’re facing is that demand is outpacing supply, with showing activity only down 18% from a very busy February of last year.