Economic Heavy Lifting by U S & Canadian Homebuilders constructconnect.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from constructconnect.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Global Stock Market Improvements Broadly Based, Finally
On the world economic stage, matters have been taking a turn for the better once again. Table 1 shows that for the first time since before the pandemic, all the major stock markets globally registered year-over-year index gains at the end of March.
For much of last year, only the North American indices managed to make headway. Presently, the increases are broadly based. Even the two exchanges with the poorest records, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and London’s FTSE, are up by decent, if not outstanding amounts, +20.2% and +18.4% respectively.
Furthermore, NASDAQ has surrendered leadership status among all indices. The ‘small cap’ Russell 2000 index pulled off the biggest year-over-year jump at the end of this year’s Q1, +92.6%. NASDAQ was in second place, at +72.0%, but third, fourth, and fifth spots were claimed by foreign indices: ‘iShares Emerging Markets, Asia,’ +59.3%; ‘iShares Emerging Markets, Worldwide,’ +56
ConstructConnect-OE’s GDP Projections on the Mark
Government statistical agencies in both the U.S. and Canada have recently been putting the finishing touches to their estimates of gross domestic product growth (or, rather, lack thereof) last year.
The most recent calculation of the U.S. GDP contraction in full year 2020 versus full year 2019 places it at -3.5%. During the quarters of last year, Q2 and Q3 displayed the wildest swings, -31.4% q/q annualized, followed by +33.4% also q/q annualized. The fourth quarter closed out the year with a gain of +4.3%, q/q annualized.
‘Annualized’ means taking the quarter-to-quarter change and projecting it out (or, in other words, assuming it holds true) over a full 12-month period. There’s a compounding aspect, but it generally yields a result not much different from multiplying by four.
2020 U S Mega Construction Projects & Carryover of Work Into 2021 constructconnect.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from constructconnect.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.