ECONOMIC TRENDS

Data Generated from Bloomberg

I. Overall

II. Production

III. Retail Sales and E-Commerce

IV. Capital Investment and Finance

V. Interest Rates

VI. Housing

VII. Employment

VIII. Trade and Exchange Rates

DEFINITIONS OF MEASURES

Industrial production measures the output of industrial establishments in the following industries: mining and quarrying, manufacturing and public utilities (electricity, gas and water supply). Production is based on the volume of the output.

Capacity utilization tracks the extent to which the installed productive capacity of a country is being used in the production of goods and services. It is reported as the percent of capacity being used for production (as opposed to sitting idle).

The Bloomberg Corporate Bankruptcy Index measures both the occurrence and severity of current and recent US bankruptcy activity for corporations with at least $50 million in reported liabilities. The index is a barometer of bankruptcy activity that equally considers the number of bankruptcies and the US dollar amount of liabilities relative to their 2000 to 2012 medians which are set at 100.   Each known bankruptcy observation is discounted daily from a full weighting to zero over the following year.

Underemployment: This measure of unemployment includes the total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force. (Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work, but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule)

Existing Home Sales: Total existing home sales include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops. All sales are based on closings from Multiple Listing Services.

New Single-Family Homes Sales: The index is computed by taking the number of houses sold in the US and dividing it by the seasonally adjusted number of houses sold in the US.

Median home prices measure changes in residential property prices.

S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index tracks the value of single-family housing within the United States. The index is a composite of single-family home price indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions.

Leading indicators include economic variables that tend to move before changes in the overall economy. These indicators give a sense of the future state of an economy.

The international trade balance measures the difference between exports of goods and services minus the imports of goods and services.