United States, Canada Both Post Strong GDP Gains

Connecting the Dots monitors major economic announcements in the United States and Canada, but MSCI also offers industrial metals industry-specific data products that provide much deeper analysis and insight. Visit MSCI’s website and click on industry data to learn more about our Metals Activity Report (MAR), Momentum Monitors, and Economic Pulse.

Meanwhile, here are the major economic headlines from the last week:

• The U.S. economy grew at a three percent annualized rate in the second quarter, a reading was slightly higher than expected. The better-than-anticipated reading was driven by robust business investment and consumer spending. Business investment grew at an annualized rate of 8.3 percent due to strong capital investment, while consumer spending expanded 2.8 percent year-over-year.
• According to Statistics Canada, the country’s real gross domestic product grew 0.2 percent in July. Services-producing industries expanded 0.2 percent for the month as retail trade grew one percent and the finance and insurance sectors rose 0.5 percent. Goods-producing industries gained just 0.1 percent, meanwhile. The utilities sector expanded 1.3 percent and the manufacturing sector grew 0.3 percent.
• Regional manufacturing readings continued to decline in September. Specifically, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s manufacturing index remained sluggish in September, falling to -21 from -19 in August. The shipments and new orders readings each declined by three points and the employment index fell to -22 in September from -15 in August. Future indexes for shipments and new orders also both declined though remained in positive territory. Read the full report at this link. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s manufacturing reading also declined. The bank’s composite index was -8 in September, down from -3 in August due mostly to declines for durable goods, particularly machinery, transportation, nonmetallic mineral, and wood manufacturing. The volume of shipments and new orders fell slightly, while production dropped from +6 to -18 and backlogs decreased from -19 to -33. The employment index also declined. Read the full report at this link.
• The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits for the first time stood at 218,000 during the week that ended Sept. 21, a figure that was down by 4,000 from the week before. Averaged over the past four weeks, first-time claims rose slightly to 224,750. In all, nearly 1.834 million people claimed jobless benefits during the week that ended Sept. 14, a number that was up by 13,000 from the week before.
• In other economic news: While the University of Michigan consumer sentiment reading improved in September to 70.1 from 67.9 in August, the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index declined by the largest amount in more than three years, falling to 98.7 in September from 105.6 in August, due to concerns about employment and business conditions; new home sales in the United States fell 4.7 percent between July 2024 and August 2024, but were up 9.8 percent between August 2023 and August 2024; and the U.S. personal consumption expenditures price index, a reading the Federal Reserve uses to measure inflation, rose 0.1 percent from July 2024 to August 2024 and 2.2 percent from August 2023 to August 2024, down from the 2.2 percent year-over-year increase seen in July.