Housing Starts and Initial Claims

We got two important economic reports this morning, and we got good news and bad news.

Let’s start with the bad. The initial claims report came in at 885,000. That’s not so good. That’s an increase of 23,000. We’re moving in the wrong direction. On top of that, the number for last week was revised higher by 9,000. A silver lining is that continuing claims came in at 5.508 million. That’s a pandemic low.

The good news is that the housing starts number was very strong. Housing starts were up 1.7% last month compared with expectations for a decline of 0.7%. That works out to 1.547 million (that’s an annualized and seasonally adjusted number). Permits were up 6% to 1.639 million.

The futures indicate that the S&P 500 will open at an intra-day high.

Posted by on December 17th, 2020 at 8:48 am


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