The page turns in the US data book and today's chapter is housing
It seems some things are never good enough for the Fed. Housing has been a staple of the recovery. It's not booming but it's been on an upward trend for around six years now
US housing starts & building permits
That's a strong trend in anyone's book but even that hasn't satisfied the Fed who remarked that it needed to do more
The rest of the housing data pretty much follows the same path
US housing
Today we're expecting October starts to come in at 1.160m vs the 1.206m last month. Permits are due in at 1.150m vs 1.105m prior
With any trend there's always a risk of it ending or at least flattening out so while any big miss today might hit the dollar, it may not have a lasting effect when taken in context with the bigger picture. A strong beat will be seen as a another big tick on the Fed rate checklist, which for October has seen jobs come in strongly and core inflation holding up. Every tick should bring a hike in Dec closer
One word of warning, we did see some skews in the Northeast regional numbers over the last two months due to some tax changes going on. That should all be washed out now but we'll keep an eye on it anyway
The numbers roll off at half past this very hour
