Rosenberg Daily - June is the new cruelest month (so far)

• ISM down to 56.2 in June from 59.8, a six-month low.
• NAHB homebuilder index slumps from 22 in May to 17 in June, tied for the steepest decline in the past four years and a three-month low.
• Consumer confidence sank to 52.9 in June from 62.7 in May, a three-month low. A decline of this magnitude is basically a 1-in-20 event.
• Retail sales slipped 1.2% MoM in May, the first decline since last September.  Auto sales fell 5% in June, to an 11.1 million annual rate, the lowest in four months.
• Manufacturing new orders shrank 1.4% in May, the steepest decline since the depths of despair in March 2009, and a new three-month low.
• Housing starts collapsed 10% MoM in May, to 593k at an annualized unit rate, a five-month low.
• New home sales plunged 33% in May to an all-time low of 300k at an annual rate. The housing inventory backlog surged to 8.5 months’ supply in May from 5.8 months in April, the highest volume of excess supply since last June.
• Household employment fell 301k in June after a 35k loss in May, snapping a four-month winning streak. The index of aggregate hours worked dipped to 92.0 from 92.2 and is lower now than it was at the market lows of March 2009 when the index was 93.3.
• Wages declined at a 1.1% annual rate in June — this never happened during the recession and is a 1-in-50 event. Rare indeed.
• Consumer prices deflated 0.2% in May after a 0.1% dip in June — the first back-to-back declines since November-December of 2008 and before that September-October of 2006 and before that, April-May of 2003. Again, hardly a normal occurrence.
• Producer prices slipped 0.3% MoM on top of a 0.1% decline in May. The PPI has now declined in three of the past four months — this last happened as the market, yet again, was plumbing the deflationary depths in early 2009 (but hey, isn’t the recession supposedly over?).
• Mortgage applications for home purchases fell 15% in June after an awful 18% plunge in May, to stand at the lowest level in ... thirteen years.
• Bank credit dipped 0.2% in June, the third decline in a row.
• Exports dropped 1.4% in April and now down for two of the past three months.  The bloom is off the rose as far as the explosive expansion in global trade flows is concerned.
• Net effective rents slid 0.9% QoQ in Q2 and by 5.9% on a YoY basis, and down in 60 of the 82 markets assessed.

---DR, 7/6