Morning Metrics

We're looking for one big one (Pending Home Sales) and one moderate one (first time jobless claims).

If you recall, last week we had surprisingly good first time jobless claims: only 407,000 people filed for unemployment insurance for the first time that week. This week, the analysts aren't so optimistic. Analysts are looking for a consensus average of 425,000 new claims (with a range of anywhere from 412k to 440k). That's not great, but it won't push the markets around the way tomorrow's employment situation report will.

Pending Home Sales? That's the big dog for the day. It's a measure of how many houses are due to be purchased, but have not yet been closed on. It's huge, for all the same reasons that existing home sales and new home sales are huge: trickle-down impact on the economy. Econoday doesn't have the consensus up yet, so I'm flying blind here, but September's index was down 1.8% to a level of 80.9.

I won't be back with timely commentary on the metrics today, due to a family emergency.