Tuesday's session was marked by Building Permits, Housing Starts and Industrial Production figures. New-home construction in the U.S. cooled in March to a four-month low as starts of single-family properties settled back from the strongest pace in almost a decade, Commerce Department data showed Tuesday. Residential starts decreased 6.8 percent to a 1.22 million annualized rate from a 1.30 in February. Forecast was for 1.25 million rate; February’s figure was revised from 1.29 million. Permits, a proxy for future construction, climbed 3.6 percent to a 1.26 million annualized rate in March.
Industrial production increased 0.5 percent in March after moving up 0.1 percent in February. The increase in March was more than accounted for by a jump of 8.6 percent in the output of utilities—the largest in the history of the index—as the demand for heating returned to seasonal norms after being suppressed by unusually warm weather in February. Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent in March, led by a large step-down in the production of motor vehicles and parts; factory output aside from motor vehicles and parts moved down 0.2 percent.
Thursday's session brought Unemployment Claims and Philly Fed Manufacturing Index data. In the week ending April 15, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 244,000, an increase of 10,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 234,000. The 4-week moving average was 243,000, a decrease of 4,250 from the previous week's unrevised average of 247,250. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.4 percent for the week ending April 8, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week's unrevised rate.
The index for current manufacturing activity in the region decreased from a reading of 32.8 in March to 22.0 this month. The index has been positive for nine consecutive months and remains at a relatively high reading but has moved down the past two months. Thirty-seven percent of the firms indicated increases in activity in April, while 15 percent reported decreases. The current new orders and shipments indexes remained at high readings but declined 11 points and 10 points, respectively.
On Friday Existing Home Sales data was published. Total existing-home sales ascended 4.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.71 million in March from a downwardly revised 5.47 million in February. March's sales pace is 5.9 percent above a year ago and surpasses January as the strongest month of sales since February 2007 (5.79 million). Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says existing sales roared back in March and were led by hefty gains in the Northeast and Midwest.
This week markets will be looking at:
CB Consumer Confidence (Tuesday 16:00)
New Home Sales (Tuesday 16:00)
Durable Goods Orders (Thursday 14:30)
Unemployment Claims (Thursday 14:30)
Advance GDP (Friday 14:30)
Chicago PMI (Friday 15:45)
Revised UoM Consumer Sentiment (Friday 16:00)