Better bargain?: Restaurants are taking on grocery stores over value, contending that eating out can be a better deal than cooking at home, The Wall Street Journal reports. They have some recent data on their side. Consumer prices at grocery stores and restaurants increased 13.1% and 7.6%, respectively, year over year in July, according to the Labor Department—the biggest inflationary gap between grocery stores and restaurants since the 1970s. Read the full story.
Still dropping: The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline plummeted 45 cents over the past three weeks to $4.10 per gallon. Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the continued decline comes as crude oil costs also remain low. Nationwide, the highest average price for regular-grade gas was in the San Francisco Bay area, at $5.36 per gallon. The lowest average was in Baton Rouge at $3.38 per gallon. Read the full story.
Declining: A gauge of U.S. homebuilder sentiment declined for an eighth-straight month, marking the worst stretch since the housing market collapsed in 2007. The National Association of Home Buyers/Wells Fargo gauge decreased by 6 points to 49 in August, figures showed this morning. The reading was worse than the most downbeat estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Read the full story from Bloomberg.
