The Olympic closing ceremonies has occupied me tonight with Korea aptly demonstrating that they are one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world.  But you would expect the nation that is home to Samsung to be right up at the top.  So I will be limiting my usual Sunday night contribution to the succinct summation with the good news being in the past two weeks the indexes have handily recovered most of their losses from the correction earlier this month and jobless claims lower than expected, the bad news that real estate is suffering again with home resales being at their lowest in 3-1/2 years.  Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 2.23.18

February 23, 2018 6:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summation of events for the week ending February 23rd, 2018

Positives:

1. Stocks rose for a 2nd straight week. S&P 500 has recovered 8% from its 2018 lows.
2. Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose 1% m/o/m, above the 0.6% expected rise.
3. Initial jobless claims fell to 222K, down 230k previously. The 4-week average fell from 228.5k to 226K
4. Same store sales were up 3.7% y/o/y, above the 2.8% expected increase.
5. PMI Composite Index rose to 55.9 from 53.8, a 27-week high.

Negatives:

1. Treasury Yields are near decade highs, just as the US supply is going to become abundant in 2018.
2. Home resales were down 4.8 percent y/o/y, the largest decline since August 2014. Existing home sales fell 3.2% m/o/m.
3. Mortgage applications fell 6% w/o/w as interest rates continue to rise.
4. Bloomberg consumer comfort index fell from 57 to 56.6.