Succinct Summations of Week’s Event’s 2.26.16 (plus Oscar Night bonus)

It's time for our traditional Sunday night one-page eye shot of the week's major events.  And for Oscar Night, as the lead sentence will tell you, Ritholtz has a special treat for us -- a look at a different set of stars that you will see on the Oscars.  Tomorrow is Leap Day.  Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Succinct Summations of Week’s Event’s 2.26.16

February 26, 2016 5:30pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summations for the week ending February 26th, 2016

Positives:

1. Real GDP rose 1%, a 0.3% increase from the original estimate.
2. Personal income and consumer spending both rose 0.5% m/o/m.
3. Durable goods rose 4.9% m/o/m (ex-transportation they rose 1.8%).
4. Existing home sales rose 0.4% to a 5.47 million annualized rate, above the 5.32 million expected.
5. Case-Shiller HPI rose 0.8% in December, and 5.7% y/o/y.
6. Jobless claims rose 10k, but the 4 week average remains very low at 272k.
7. Bloomberg’s consumer comfort index holds steady at 44.2.
8. Consumer sentiment came in at 91.7, up from 91 previously.

Negatives:

1. PMI services flash fell to 49.8, down from 53.7 previously and the worst reading since October 2013.
2. Consumer confidence fell to 92.2, down from 97.8 previously and below the 97.2 expected.
3. PMI Manufacturing Index Flash came in at 51, the lowest reading in three years.
4. MBA mortgage composite index fell 4.3% w/o/w and refinances fell 8%.
5. New home sales fell to an annualized 494k, below the 520k expected.

ATLASGAL image of the plane of the Milky Way - The Big Picture

ATLASGAL image of the plane of the Milky Way

February 28, 2016 8:30pm by Barry Ritholtz

Have a look at a different set of stars than what you see on the Oscars:

This video takes a close look at a new image of the Milky Way released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX telescope in Chile has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimetre wavelengths — between infrared light and radio waves — and in finer detail than recent space-based surveys.

The APEX data, at a wavelength of 0.87 millimetres, shows up in red and the background blue image was imaged at shorter infrared wavelengths by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope as part of the GLIMPSE survey. The fainter extended red structures come from complementary observations made by ESA’s Planck satellite.

European Southern Observatory (ESO)