Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Housing Starts Surge In Sparse "Good News" For 2015

This morning, housing starts data showed a surprisingly good surge in "starts":

At the same time, however, housing SALES have been disappointing, so it's likely that this increase in construction is a more a manifestation of builder sentiment, than consumer sentiment. It may lead to oversupply! Headlines related to housing sales were weak just in recent days, so this may end up being counterproductive!

Nevertheless, this supposed good news brought this reaction from Wall St, where everything seems twisted to be the opposite of what one would expect in recent years:
Clearly, this "good news" is seen as bad news on Wall St!

Update: This perspective this morning from Zero Hedge:
"As can be seen on the chart below, the last time single-family housing starts in the Northeast soared as much as they did in was in June 2008, just before the financial system nearly collapsed."
Here is the accompanying chart: