Tuesday brought Building Permits, Housing Starts, CPI and Industrial Production figure. Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,116,000. This is 3.6% above the revised March rate of 1,077,000, but is 5.3% below the April 2015 estimate. Single-family authorizations in April were at a rate of 736,000; this is 1.5% above the revised March figure of 725,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 348,000 in April.

Privately-owned housing starts in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,172,000. This is 6.6% above the revised March estimate of 1,099,000, but is 1.7% below the April 2015 rate of 1,192,000. Single-family housing starts in April were at a rate of 778,000; this is 3.3% above the revised March figure of 753,000. The April rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 373,000.

US CPI increased 0.4% in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, beating forecasts on 0.3% incline. Over the last 12 months, the all items index rose 1.1% before seasonal adjustment. The seasonally adjusted all items increase was broad-based, with the indexes for food, energy, and all items less food and energy all rising in April. The food index rose 0.2% after declining in March, with the food at home index increasing slightly. The index for energy increased 3.4%, with the gasoline index rising 8.1%, and the indexes for fuel oil and natural gas also advancing.

Industrial production increased 0.7% in April after decreasing in the previous two months. Manufacturing output rose 0.3% after declining the same amount in March. The index for utilities jumped 5.8% in April, as the demand for electricity and natural gas returned to a more normal level after being suppressed by warmer-than-usual weather in March. Mining production fell 2.3% in April, and it has decreased more than 1 1/2 percent per month, on average, over the past eight months. At 104.1% of its 2012 average, total industrial production in April was 1.1% below its year-earlier level.

Focus of the Wednesday's session was on FOMC Meeting Minutes. “Most participants judged that if incoming data were consistent with economic growth picking up in the second quarter, labor market conditions continuing to strengthen and inflation making progress toward the committee’s 2 percent objective, then it likely would be appropriate for the committee to increase the target range for the federal funds rate in June,” according to minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s April 26-27 meeting released Wednesday in Washington. “Participants expressed a range of views about the likelihood that incoming information would make it appropriate to adjust the stance of policy at the time of the next meeting,” the minutes stated.

Referring to the June meeting, officials “generally judged it appropriate to leave their policy options open and maintain the flexibility to make this decision” based on how the economy evolves, the minutes said. In March they warned that global developments “continue to pose risks,” a warning they dropped in April. “This change in language was intended to convey the committee’s sense that the risks associated with global developments had diminished somewhat since the March FOMC meeting without characterizing the overall balance of risks,” the minutes said.

Thursday was marked by Unemployment Claims and Philly Fed Manufacturing Index figures. In the week ending May 14, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 278,000, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 294,000. The 4-week moving average was 275,750, an increase of 7,500 from the previous week's unrevised average of 268,250. This marks 63 consecutive weeks of initial claims below 300,000, the longest streak since 1973. 

The diffusion index for current activity was essentially unchanged at -1.8 this month. Analysts were expecting increase to 3.2 points. The index has registered a negative reading in eight of the last nine months. The current new orders index decreased for the second consecutive month, from 0.0 to -1.9 this month. Conversely, the current shipments index rose 10 points; however, the percentage of firms reporting a decline in shipments narrowly exceeded the percentage reporting an increase.

On Friday Existing Home Sales figures were published. Total existing-home sales rose 1.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million in April from an upwardly revised 5.36 million in March. After last month's gain, sales are now up 6.0 percent from April 2015. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says April's sales increase signals slowly building momentum for the housing market this spring.

This week markets will be looking at:

New Home Sales (Tuesday 16:00)

Unemployment Claims (Thursday 14:30)

Durable Goods Orders (Thursday 14:30)

Prelim GDP (Friday 14:30)

Revised UoM Consumer Sentiment (Friday 16:00)