Unfortunately, US unemployment fell last month. The economy added around 100,000 jobs, reducing the unemployment rate to 4.5 percent, and raising fears that interest rates won’t be cut any time soon.

The lack of an interest rate cut is killing the housing market.
As a consequence, housing sales have declined, leading to a dramatic cut in realtor commissions.

Stocks rose on the bad news, as did the dollar. Meanwhile a separate government report showed that the trade deficit declined marginally in January.