Full text of U.S. Financial Data : November 29, 2001

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November 29, 2001

USFinancialData
THE WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS:
■ In October, the nominal value of new durable goods orders to
manufacturers rose $20.9 billion, or 12.8 percent. This increase was
the first since May and more than offset September’s 9.2 percent
decline. New orders for defense capital goods jumped $12.4 billion
in October, or 206.3 percent. Excluding defense, though, new orders
for capital goods rose 7.4 percent, the largest increase since June
2000.
■ Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits totaled
488,000 in the week ending Nov. 24, up 54,000 from the previous
week. The four-week moving average totaled 454,000, the smallest
number of initial claims in nine weeks.
■ Following a 1 percent increase in September, sales of newly
constructed single-family homes rose 0.2 percent in October. Sales
of previously sold single-family homes, however, rose 5.5 percent
in October after falling 11.6 percent in September. Measured from
a year earlier, new home sales are down 4.6 percent, while existing
home sales are up 2 percent.
■ In November, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index
fell to its lowest level since February 1994. The index has declined
for five straight months.
■ Paced by contributions from the real M2 measure of the money
supply, and the spread between yields on 10-year Treasury bonds
and the federal funds rate, the index of leading economic indicators
rose 0.3 percent in October. This was the first rise in three months.
All data are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise indicated.
U.S. Financial Data is published weekly by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of
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Information in this publication is also included in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) data base
on the internet at www.stls.frb.org/fred.