10 Things You Need to Know: May 28, 2025
Key data releases this week include: durable goods orders (Tue), FHFA House Price Index (Tue), consumer confidence (Tue), FOMC meeting minutes (Wed), Q1 GDP revision (Thu), pending home sales (Thu), personal income and spending (Fri), and PCE Price Index (Fri).
The Conference Board
May 19, 2025
The Leading Economic Index for the US fell sharply by 1.0% in April 2025 to 99 after declining by 0.8% in March. Most components of the index deteriorated. Notably, consumers’ expectations have become continuously more pessimistic since January 2025, while the contribution of building permits and average working hours in manufacturing turned negative in April.
Haver
May 22, 2025
Existing home sales slipped 0.5% (-2.0% y/y) in April to 4.00 million units after declining 5.9% to 4.020 million units in March, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected 4.10 million in unit sales. The median price of all existing homes (NSA) jumped 2.7% (1.8% y/y) to $414,000 in April after a 1.6% March increase.
Haver
May 27, 2025
U.S. house prices slipped 0.1% during March after holding steady in February, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index. The year-on-year increase decelerated to 3.7% in March, the lowest since June 2023, and remained well below the high of 18.7% in February 2022.
FT, Euronews
May 27, 2025, May 26, 2025
The European Union has agreed to speed up trade negotiations with the United States in an effort to prevent a trade war. The decision follows a phone call between President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after which Trump agreed to extend the deadline to hit the EU with 50% tariffs to July 9 to allow for more time to negotiate.
Bloomberg
May 23, 2025
India’s central bank governor Sanjay Malhotra has said trade tariffs will moderately impact growth, but the economy remains poised to be the world’s fastest-growing major market. The RBI projects 6.5% GDP growth this fiscal year and has cut rates to 6% to support expansion. Malhotra stressed the need for trade diversification and signaled more policy easing ahead if needed.
Barron’s
May 26, 2025
The so-called junk bond market is looking less junky. Its top tier, rated BB, makes up over half the market, versus 35% two decades ago. Dodgier CCC is down to 10% from 25%. The entire high-yield bond market, with 2,300 issuers, is worth $1.4 trillion. The Treasury market grows that much every nine months because of deficits.
Barron’s
May 26, 2025
Based on the credit-default swaps market, where investors buy insurance against negative events, the costs to hedge U.S. government debt against default are consistent with ratings of Baa1/BBB+, near the lower end of investment-grade credits. Further, U.S. CDS spreads are approaching those of Greece, with its barely investment-grade credit rating and history of defaults.
Bloomberg
May 23, 2025
May 25 marks the halfway point in the Trump administration’s 90-day tariff pause. Aside from a limited US-UK trade agreement and some broadly positive assessments of talks, there is little progress to show so far. Trade negotiations are complex and take time, but with roughly 20 countries on the administration’s priority list, much remains to be done in the next 45 days.
Capital Economics
May 23, 2025
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the House has raised some concerns about the fiscal outlook. However, we expect the rise in tariff revenue to almost exactly offset the House bill’s extra costs, keeping the deficit close to 6% of GDP. As a result, this doesn’t appear to be the start of a fiscal crisis, despite the decision by Moody’s to downgrade US government debt.