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In the News This Week

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.

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