We have added a number of cool new features to Stock Rover. In March we added the Future Income Tool which we wrote about in a blog post. And then in May we added Visuals, which is a comprehensive new facility for data presentation that can be fully customized to see data the way you like it. We wrote two blogs post about Visuals: what it is out of the box and how to customize it. In this latest blog post we cover a few additional features we added to Stock Rover this week that you might find useful.

Retail sales were up $73 billion (+17.7%) in May after an upwardly revised sales drop of -14.7% for April. Sales were up in all business categories with the largest gains in clothing (+188%, +$5.3 billion), furniture (+89.7%, +$3.7 billion), and sporting goods/hobby/book stores (+88.2%, +$3.3 billion). Year to date sales through May were down -4.7% compared to the same period of 2019, with the largest drops for clothing (-42.9%), electronics (-19.3%), furniture (-18.1%), and motor vehicles (-10.5%). Gasoline station sales were hit by both falling demand and low prices, dropping their year to date sales by -16.7%. Year to date sales increased for nonstore (e.g. online) retailers (+16.6%), grocery stores (+13.6%), building materials (+6.7%), and general merchandise stores (+2.6%).

Industrial production rose +1.4% in May but drops of -4.6% and March and -12.5% in April kept the yearly rate at a -15.3% decline. Oil and gas well drilling along with crude oil extraction continued to slow, pushing mining to a -6.8% drop in the latest and largest of 4 consecutive monthly declines, and mining capacity utilization fell from 81.2% to 75.4%. Manufacturing grew at a +3.8% rate, narrowing the yearly decline to -16.5%, and manufacturing capacity utilization rose from a low of 60.0% in April to 62.2%. Automotive products lead manufacturing growth for the month at a +81.9% increase (-57.8% Y/Y), followed by clothing (+21.6%, -25.8% Y/Y) and appliances (+9.4%, -19.1% Y/Y).

Housing starts grew to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of .974 million, up 4.3% from April, but down -23.2% from the 1.268 million unit rate in May 2019. Construction increased most in the West (+69.8%, +127,000 units), and the Northeast (+12.8%, +6,000 units) but gains were offset by drops in the South (-16.0%, -91,000 units), which makes up nearly half of nationwide residential construction, and the Midwest (-1.5%, -2,000 units). Forward looking building permits rose +5.2%, and were also up +5.2% for the year. The largest increase in permits was in the South (+12.8%, +11,000), followed by the Midwest (+6.3%, +1,000), while permits were unchanged in the Northeast, and dropped in the West (-5.6%, -3,000).