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This year has been a wild ride for the economy and with the First Time Home Buyers credit; we have seen a huge increase in first time buyers. Several weeks ago Owen Wald and his wife came in and wanted to redo their entire home with carpet, laminate tile and laminate flooring. Their flooring was trashed and wanted to make their home beautiful, but like all Americans had a tight budget. They had shopped around and thought they would have to do their home in three phases to meet budget constraints.
We started talking and he explained to me how he had been all over town shopping. The flooring retailers he had been to where too expensive, had to wait weeks for the flooring to come in or had a very limited selection. He was almost ready to give in an just do a room at a time.
I asked him what his budget was and we went to work. We looked at all the flooring and carpet and in about 30 minutes he walked out with 12 flooring samples for the kitchen, bathroom and living rooms and carpet for the two bedrooms all within his budget.
The next day his wife came in and was bubbling with excitement. She told me, “we are so tired of shopping for home accessories and we didn’t think we would be able to do all the floors. When Owen came home and said we could do the entire house and showed me all the samples I was overjoyed.”
They purchased the laminate flooring that day.
These are the stories we encounter everyday. Customers have shopped every possible place for flooring. Once they make it to us they know they have found a great bargain. Have you been shopping for flooring, but prices are to high, not enough choices or have to wait weeks for the flooring to come in?
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After a quiet night in the Foreign Exchange markets in Asian trading, the markets opened today with some sell pressure on the pound particularly against the USD. The pound slipped from a touch over 1.48 down to 1.4760. This could be attributed to weaker consumer confidence data released last night- the May index fell sharply by 10 points from April to 65.
However the prospect of another Mervyn King speech tonight at Mansion House could be more on the button, spooking the sterling bulls. In the recent past, whenever Mervyn king has made a public address sterling has always suffered due to his negative but admittedly realistic sentiment on the UK economy. Data already released this morning focused on the UK jobless sector, the data was actually not too bad with May jobless claims in at -30,900 better than the forecasted -20,000. In addition the claimant count rate came in at 4.6% and the unemployment rate at 7.9%, again slightly better than forecasts at 4.7% and 8% respectively. A muted response to this morning’s data for the pound as the market is well aware that unemployment levels should suffer following the emergency budget next week. Look for the pound to remain subdued today ahead of Mr. Kings address later- in fact I would not expect any significant movement in the pound until after Tuesday’s budget.
The surprise in the international markets is the recent fight back of the euro which pushed to 1.2353 yesterday against the USD. This is despite further pressure in the bond markets- this morning we have seen the Spanish/German 10 year government bond yield widen to 218bps, this is a lifetime high and Portuguese/German equivalent widened to 312bps. The move higher for the euro despite the negatives looks reflective of a short squeeze in the markets to shake up what was a market biased on shorting the euro. This is a relief rally for international payments and transfers which I would not expect to be sustained especially if the bond markets continue to deteriorate. On top of this there is also news of disagreement to stress testing of the European banking sector with Spain in favour and Germany against, which raises the question why are the Germans so against the idea?
The USD has unwound some of its recent gains following a week with little excitement (like the World Cup so far) and no huge surprises leading to gradual appetite coming back into the frame. Later today from the US, the pick of which is the Producer Price Index, Industrial production and a speech from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke.
Keep an eye on the Forex with an online currency converter till the budget.
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