New home sales in the U.S. held relatively steady in September 2026 as builder incentives continued making buying a new home more affordable than buying an existing home for homebuyers.

Political Calculations' initial estimate of the total value of new homes sold across the United States during September 2026 is $28.88 billion. This value represents a small decrease from August 2026's initial estimate of $29.20 billion, which after the latest data revisions, came in at $28.88 billion, indicating the new home market was relatively steady month-over-month.

The average price at which new homes are being sold has been falling since March 2026 because of generous incentives from builders to make sales in a rising interest rate environment for mortgages. Realtor.com shared some insights into how generous those incentives have become for homebuyers in recent months:

Builders are facing some challenges, and this month’s new construction data shows that clearly. On the flip side, buyers hold the negotiating power in the new home market and can find some exceptional deals on new homes. Mortgage rates are certainly a deterrent for prospective buyers, but our research shows that new home buyers, who often take advantage of reduced rate offerings from builders, pay as much as a full percentage point less on their mortgage. The median new home sale price is less than the median existing home sale price, and new construction buyers benefit from a lower total cost of ownership over their time in the home.

The following charts present the U.S. new home market capitalization, the number of new home sales, and their average sale prices as measured by their time-shifted, trailing twelve month averages from January 1976 through August 2026.

New home sales relatively steady

New home prices falling:

While the incentives are sustaining new home homes, they are impacting the earnings of homebuilders. Realtor.com describes how the new home market has changed for several publicly-traded builders since the start of 2026:

For the first nine months of the year, overall new-home sales are 2.9% below where they were in 2025, Realtor.com® economist Joel Berner says.

"Buyers are reluctant in this environment of elevated mortgage rates, and builders are having to offer lower prices and buyer incentives to entice them," Berner says.

Last week, three major builders, PulteGroup (NYSE: PHM), M/I Homes (NYSE: MHO), and NVR, Inc. (NYSE: NVR), all reported major net income declines. That's caused many of them to be more selective about the markets where they're active, but they have also reported using incentives to entice buyers.

“The rapid increase in interest rates has stretched affordability even further, made selling an existing home even harder, and has pushed even more consumers to the sidelines,” PulteGroup CEO Ryan Marshall said as he reported the company's year-over-year net income dropped by 17% in the third quarter.

Providing financing that reduces a homebuyers mortgage rate by a full percent over what buyers can otherwise get from mortgage lenders is a huge contributor to how new homes have become more affordable to buy than existing homes.

Note: We added the links to the stock market tickers of the three publicly traded firms referenced in the quoted passage discussing the impact of builder incentives on the homebuilders' bottom line.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 27 October 2026. 

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Median and Average Sale Price of Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 27 October 2026. 

Image credit: Aerial view of city during daytime photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

Today's fuel prices are once again elevated for consumers as the latest result of a series of shocks in the underlying price of oil that have taken place since the 1973 Oil Crisis. How does today's average price of a gallon of gasoline at the pump compare to those earlier episodes?

To find out, we tapped the U.S. Energy Information Administration's data on the average retail price of a gallon of gasoline sold in the United States, which surprisingly only extends back to April 1993. That month marks when the EIA adopted its basic methodology for surveying retail gasoline prices across all the regions it monitors in the United States, which has been consistently collected and reported since.

We've taken that available nominal price data and presented it in the following chart from April 1993 through September 2026 as the red data series. We've also adjusted its price for the effects of inflation to be in terms of constant September 2026 U.S. dollars (blue). Here's the chart, which includes our annotations of the contributors to the major oil prices shocks that have taken place during this period:

The current price shock ranks fourth out of the four major shocks covered in the chart after accounting for inflation. The period from 2005 to 2008 comes in first as the fuel prices rose after Hurricane Katrina and remained in short supply as China's and India's oil consumption grew sharply in this period until the onset of the 2008-09 Financial Crisis and Great Recession.

In second place, the escalation of prices resulting from the series of shocks diminishing the output of oil from Libya and from nations affected by the Arab Spring uprisings in the early 2010s, which lasted until the shale oil boom in the U.S. triggered OPEC to slash prices to try the stifle the new competetion.

Fuel prices at the pump then hit a low with the loss of demand in 2020's Coronavirus Pandemic, but quickly recovered in 2021 to the third-highest spike on the chart with the Biden administration's fiscal stimulus that also produced high inflation in the U.S. Combined with the geopolitical impact of Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which reduced the supply of Russian produced oil because of economic sanctions, fuel prices went on to reach the third-highest peak in June 2022. Fuel prices then fell for several years as the Biden administration sought to undo the damage its policies created by draining the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The Iran conflict, which began on 28 February 2026, has resulted in the fourth highest spike on the chart.

Unlike the previous price spikes, the price of diesel fuel has risen relatively higher in the two most recent shock events because of diminished global refining capacity for producing diesel fuel in the period since the 2010s. The next chart shows how the average price per gallon for diesel in the U.S. has changed from April 1994 through September 2026, which covers the EIA's available data for this fuel.

The latest price shock has been constrained in part by the U.S. supplying markets with oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and by other nations' supplying oil from their strategic reserves.

The EIA's weekly price data for both gasoline and diesel points to a small decline in these prices during the first three weeks of October 2026.

References

U.S. Energy Information Administration. Petroleum & Other Liquids: U.S. All Grades All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices (Dollars per Gallon), April 1993-September 2026. [Excel spreadsheet]. Accessed 25 October 2026.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. Petroleum & Other Liquids: U.S. No 2 Diesel Retail Prices (Dollars per Gallon), April 1994-September 2026. [Excel spreadsheet]. Accessed 25 October 2026.

U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index, All Urban Consumers - (CPI-U), U.S. City Average, All Items, 1982-84=100[Online Database]. Accessed 25 October 2026. Data collection for October 2025 was omitted and is presented as the average of September and November 2025's index values.

Image credit: A row of gas pumps filled with gas photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash.

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) closed out the trading week ending on Friday, 23 October 2026 a little under a half percent from its previous week's close. The index went into the weekend at 7,623.68, which is 2.5% below its record high close of 7,818.93 back on 6 October 2026.

What the Federal Reserve will be doing with interest rates continued to dominate investor attention during the week that was. With Fed officials silent in blackout mode in the week ahead of their scheduled meeting on 27-28 October 2026 to determine their next actions, investors had little information to go on.

It showed in how little expectations changed for how the Fed will set the Federal Funds Rate in the weeks ahead. The CME Group's FedWatch Tool continues to project the Fed skip taking any action during this week's meeting and will next act to hike the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter point at the end of its next meeting on 9 December (2026-Q4). That hike would be followed by another quarter point rate hike that will be announced when the Fed's rate-setting Open Market Committee meets on 17 March (2027-Q1).

After that, the FedWatch Tool anticipates one more rate hike in 2027, coming when the Fed meets on 15 September (2027-Q3). That's 18 weeks later than what it projected a week earlier, but in reality, it wouldn't take much to move it earlier on the calendar, say to June (2027-Q2).

The latest update of the alternative futures chart shows stock prices dropped to the lower end of the range associated with investors focusing on the current quarter of 2026-Q4 as they set current day stock prices.

That downward adjustment mostly took place in the latter part of the week. It came about as investors became increasingly concerned over how much tech companies are spending to realize their plans for building and implementing AI systems and also because also because oil prices increased because of ongoing geopolitical events in the Middle East. While neither of these are new concerns, in the absence of direction on the future for interest rates from the Fed, they represented the bulk of new information investors had to absorb during the week that was.

Here are the week's market-moving headlines.

Monday, 19 October 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil slips from five-month high with Hormuz transits in focus
• Global food inflation is expected to intensify as supply shocks pile up
• Fed minions upset AI boom is keeping U.S. economy growing:
• Fed sees AI boom adding to inflation headache, but others may pay for the medicine
• Bigger domestic trouble, export growth developing in China:
• China's economic growth picks up as exports boom, consumers balk
• China set to leave benchmark lending rates unchanged for 17th month
• BOJ minions admit Japan's inflation is almost where they want it, are expected to use it to justify more rate hikes:
• BOJ chief says underlying inflation 'quite close' to price goal
• BOJ may need to tighten faster if inflation beats forecast, IMF says
• S&P 500, Nasdaq advance ahead of mega-cap companies’ earnings
• Nasdaq climbs as chip and AI-linked stocks bounce back

Tuesday, 20 October 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Housing is flashing warning signs just as the Fed weighs more interest rate hikes
• September data shows housing market in a deep freeze
• US single-family housing starts plunge; building permits hit 3-1/2-year low
• China's September US soybean imports rebound from zero a year earlier, data shows
• Brent hits five-month high as attacks on ships, Saudi sites fuel supply worries
• AI data center projects boost US warehouse demand and rents, real estate company JLL says
• Economists expect Fed minions to sit on their hands in October 2026:
• Fed to skip October but raise rates again in December, nearly all economists say
• Smaller stimulus, bigger trouble developing in China:
• China's push to bolster social insurance schemes draws online backlash
• China leaves loan rates steady for 17th consecutive month
• China's off-kilter tech economy is by design
• BOJ minions see more rate hikes ahead as they boost inflation forecast and wage-price inflation spiral gets going:
• Bank of Japan may raise inflation forecast, stand pat on rates, sources say
• Japan shifting to wage-driven inflation phase, finance minister says
• Bank of Japan's Himino signals readiness to raise borrowing costs
• Growth signs developing in Eurozone:
• Europe's earnings boom widens beyond energy and AI
• Dow outperforms as Wall Street rises, healthcare stocks lead gains
• Trading Day: Oil reversal lifts spirits

Wednesday, 21 October 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil prices steady as investors weigh geopolitics, lower US stockpiles
• US aims to loan about a third of heating oil reserve in bid to tame prices
• Trump says companies should pay 'dividend' to communities to make data centers popular
• Bigger trouble, higher interest rates developing in Japan:
• Japan exports rise 16.7% in September as AI chip demand powers trade
• Japan exports post huge miss in September as growth slows to 16.7%
• BOJ to raise rates to 1.50% in December, sticking to quarterly pace: Reuters poll
• Strange economic metaphor developing in Eurozone:
• Nvidia's Huang hails Europe's AI potential, flanked by robot ducks
• ECB says AI, greener economy help euro zone weather energy shock
• Bigger trouble still developing in Eurozone:
• Euro zone bond yields rise as French borrowing costs hit 24-year high
• French 10-year bond yields hit 5%, highest since 2002
• Bond selloff revives debate about euro zone banks' 'doom loop'
• Nasdaq leads Wall Street gains as SpaceX, Super Micro boost AI sentiment
• Wall Street closes higher; SpaceX, Tesla push markets up

Thursday, 22 October 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US banks detect unauthorized AI agents in customer accounts, Axios reports
• Millions of hacking attempts as companies and governments race to patch PHP flaws
• Why governments pulled websites offline over the decades-old PHP programming language
• Companies cutting jobs as investments shift toward AI
• Oil rises as US orders diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia amid escalating tensions
• From groceries to home loans, high oil prices permeate daily life
• US weekly jobless claims near 57-year lows, underscore labor market stability
• Former Fed minion says US economy isn't running too hot:
• The economy is not overheating, says former Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan
• Bigger real estate losses developing in China:
• China Evergrande liquidators recover 1% of debt claims after 2-1/2 years
• BOJ minions worrying less about propping up Japan's currency, see other reasons to keep hiking Japan's interest rates:
• Yen set for biggest rally in a month as investors seek safe havens
• Strength in Japanese loan demand expected to leave scope for more BOJ hikes
• Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone, ECB minions want to do away with national economies within Eurozone:
• French debt risk premium reaches euro zone sovereign crisis levels
• ECB's Santos Pereira pushes for deeper EU integration
• Nasdaq, S&P decline as AI spending worries weaken investor sentiment, U.S. stocks suffer
• S&P 500, Nasdaq end sharply lower as revived AI doubts ignite tech selloff
• Meta shares slide, default insurance hits record as AI spending alarms investors
• Gold falls to 11-week low; silver slumps to lowest close this year

Friday, 23 October 2026

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US business activity cools in October; strong demand fueling price pressures
• Oil prices jump $3 on Houthi attacks, oil spill, highest settlement since April
• Trump says Canada 'working very hard' to make a deal with US
• Trump removes 50% tariffs on Canadian products to try to boost to Maine companies
• Canadian jet maker Bombardier says it plans new $270 million US investment
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China urges government agencies to mitigate AI job displacement
• China calls on oil, gas firms to boost output, build strategic supply bases
• BOJ minions getting excited to hike interest rates again as bigger trouble develops in Japan:
• Japan's core inflation exceeds BOJ target, cements near-term rate hike chance
• Japan manufacturing growth slows to 7-month low in October, PMI shows
• Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone:
• Euro zone growth slows to 4-month low amid rising costs and French strife, survey shows
• French bond pain puts euro zone's weak links on notice
• EU vows to fix 'China Shock 2.0' via talks with Beijing
• S&P 500 ends lower for week as AI spending concerns and rising oil prices weigh
• Wall Street closes lower to end rocky week
• Gold settles below $4,000 after steepest weekly loss in nearly five months

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of real GDP growth for the U.S. economy in 2026-Q3 dipped 0.1% to 3.1% this week. After the BEA releases its initial estimate of GDP for 2026-Q3 on 29 October 2026, the GDPNow tool will shift toward projecting 2026-Q4's real GDP growth rate.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull dressed as a batter for the Milwaukee Brewers and a bear dressed as a catcher for the Tampa Bay Rays who are angry with a Federal Reserve official dressed like an umpire who is being vague about where the Fed's strike zone is for determining how to set interest rates."

The 2026 World Series for Major League Baseball gets underway today. The National League champion Milwaukee Brewers will host the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays in the first game of the best-of-seven series that will determine the ultimate champion of 2026 MLB season.

Both teams deserve to compete in this year's fall classic. There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball, 12 of which were eligible to compete for the world title at the end of the 2026 season. Of those teams, the Brewers and Rays had the best win-loss records in their respective leagues. They beat out the other ten teams to earn their slot in the World Series, so there's no question that the winningest teams in both leagues are playing for 2026's world championship.

Both teams share an unusual characteristic in the modern era of baseball playoffs. The payrolls of both teams fall well below the median of the teams that made it to the postseason.

Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross explores that unique outcome in the following infographic:

The Milwaukee Brewers' payroll ranked 19th overall in the major leagues, while the Tampa Bay Rays ranked 25th out of 30 teams. Which is especially remarkable because if you were to try to predict which teams would even make it to the MLB playoffs based on how much each team pays its players, you wouldn't pick either to make it to the playoffs, much less the World Series.

In Ross' infographic, the length of the baseball bats indicate each team's payroll, while the blue-colored bats represent the teams that reached the playoffs and the red-colored bats represent the teams that didn't make it. Of the teams with the ten highest payrolls in 2026, eight made it to the postseason.

There's no question that money matters in a team's success, with the sport's most highly paid players also among its best players who can win enough games to make it possible for their teams to qualify for the playoffs. Low-paying teams that make the playoffs are the anomalies in baseball's modern era.

And yet, the final two teams competing for professional baseball's top title in 2026 are low-paying anomalies.

In the early 2000s, Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane found success in the regular season by identifying undervalued but highly talented players, leading to the A's multiple appearances in baseball's postseason despite having among the lowest payrolls in sports. But his teams never made it to the World Series, often because randomness and bad luck would derail them. As he described it, "My s*** doesn’t work in the playoffs.”

Over twenty years later, new generations of general managers have flipped Billy Beane's script for success. They've demonstrated that assembling teams of talented players by offering them high pay can reliably get them into the playoffs. Even so, it doesn't guarantee they'll win the world championship. The same uncontrollable and random factors that derailed Billy Beane's teams' after getting into the playoffs are afflicting them as well.

It's a relief to know the curse of Billy Beane is still alive and well in baseball. Because how boring would baseball be if the thing that really decides who will win the World Series each year was decided before the season even began.

Reference

Jenna Ross. Does Spending More Help MLB Teams Make the Playoffs? Visual Capitalist. [Webp image]. 19 October 2026.

Did you know that...

• if you rent, you're paying the property owner's income and property taxes?
• if you buy food, you're paying a farmer's income and property taxes?
• if you fly, you're paying the airline's income taxes, payroll taxes, and property taxes? And also the airline employees' income taxes and payroll taxes?
• if you buy a product made outside the country, you're paying an importer's tariffs and customs duties? In addition to their income and property taxes?
• if you buy a product, you're paying the maker's income and property taxes?
• if you borrow money, you're paying your lender's income and property taxes?

It would be more accurate to say you're paying a portion of the other party's taxes for each of these items and not all their taxes, but you get the idea.

Exit question: Have you paid your fair share of their taxes?

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a giant iceberg labeled 'Hidden Taxes.' Above the water, only a tiny tip is visible and labeled 'Sales Tax.' Below the waterline is a massive submerged iceberg labeled with: 'Business Income Tax,' 'Property Tax,' 'Payroll Tax,' 'Regulatory Costs,' 'Licensing Fees,' 'Import Duties,' and 'Fuel Taxes.' In the foreground, a family at a grocery checkout studies a receipt and notices only the small sales tax line. Arrows from the hidden underwater taxes flow upward into grocery price tags and consumer goods. Caption: The tax you see is often the smallest one you pay."