US Home Prices see record drop. Dollar continues strength in Forex Trading. | CountingPips Forex Blog

September 30, 2008 - Forex Economic News

US Home Prices see record drop. Dollar continues strength in Forex Trading.

Home prices in the U.S. continue to decline as the Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller index released today showed that home prices fell new record amounts in July when compared to a year ago. The S & P’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index measures sale prices of existing single-family homes nationally and tracks 10-city and 20-city composite home price measurements. USD rises in forex trading The July house prices report showed that the 20-city composite index fell an annual 16.3 percent in July to mark a new record low while the 10-city composite index also fell a new record low 17.5 percent in July compared to last year.

The areas hardest hit continued to be Las Vegas and Phoenix with annual declines of 29.9 percent and 29.3 percent, respectively. On an annual basis, none of the 20 metropolitan areas measured have shown house price increases with Charlotte being the area with the lowest decline at 1.8 percent. On a monthly basis, Phoenix registered the largest house price decline with a fall of 2.6 percent while Minneapolis registered the largest growth for the month with a rise of 1.3 percent.

David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S & P, commented in the report, "There are signs of a slow down in the rate of decline across the metro areas, but no evidence of a bottom" and that "The Sunbelt continues to be the story, with the seven cities that basically represent that area reporting annual declines roughly between 20 and 30%. While some cities did show some marginal improvement over last month’s data, there is still very little evidence of any particular region experiencing an absolute turnaround.”

Consumer Confidence bumps up in September Survey.

Consumer confidence improved in September according to the Consumer Confidence Index produced by the Conference Board. In a survey of 5,000 households, the index showed that consumer confidence increased over 1 point from 58.5 in August to level at 59.8 in September. The Present Situation index declined from 65.0 in August to 58.8 in September while the Expectations index rose from 54.1 in August to 60.5 in September.

Forex - The U.S. dollar continued to show strength in the forex markets today as the American currency has advanced verses all the major currencies. The dollar advanced verses the Japanese yen after falling yesterday to trading at 106.37 yen per dollar in the afternoon of the U.S. trading session. The euro tumbled for the second straight day today against the dollar as the EUR/USD pair traded at the 1.4065 level today. Helping push the euro lower today was the announcement that the French and Belgian governments provided funding to Dexia SA, a lender to local governments. Elsewhere, the dollar advanced verses the Australian dollar to an exchange rate of 0.7897, the Canadian dollar to 1.0642, the Swiss franc to 1.1241, the New Zealand kiwi to 0.6688 and the British pound to 1.7768.

EUR/USD Chart - The euro falling vs. the U.S. dollar as lender Dexia SA is bailed out and fears of a crisis make there way to Europe(4 Hour Chart).

Today's Forex Chart

tags: home prices, case shiller, consumer confidence, forex rates

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