Consumer prices rose slightly in September on higher costs for food and housing, but inflation was kept in check as energy prices fell. The cost of food rose .3%, while the cost of gas fell 1% after dropping 4.1% in August.
Source: dshort.com
On the upside, sales of existing homes bounced back to the fastest pace of the year in September, after a modest decline in August. Sales increased 2.4% to an annual pace of 5.17 million units, while inventory for the month was 2.3 million homes – a 5.3 month supply at the current sales pace.
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
In other good news out of the housing market, new home sales increased modestly in September to hit a six-year high. Sales of new homes advanced .2% to an annual pace of 467,000 – the fastest pace since July 2008.
Monday marked the 27th anniversary of “Black Monday”: on October 19, 1987, stocks plunged 22% in their worst day in history. The anniversary was marked with a .91% gain for the S&P 500.
American workers are leaving a lot of vacation time on the table, according to a new study by Oxford Economics. Workers are using just 77% of their vacation time: in 2013, workers earned close to 21 vacation days, but used only 16 of them. And of the days that were not used, not all were rolled over – 1.6 days were forfeited. That amounts to 169 million days given up…and $52.4 billion in lost benefits. Use of vacation days stands at the lowest in the past four decades.