Busy day in the economic headlines arena, with Housing Start, Claims PPI and Philly Fed all on deck. Goldman summarizes the expectations and the upwardly biased consensus.
8:30: Housing starts (January): Rebound. Housing starts likely rebounded in January for two reasons. First, single-family building activity has been steadily improving, and that seems likely to have continued. The better-than-expected homebuilder sentiment index yesterday may suggest upside risks to our forecasts for this component. Second, multi-family housing starts declined by 20% in December, and this sharp drop should at least partially reverse.
Starts: GS: +7.0%; Consensus: +2.7%; Last -4.1%.
Permits: Consensus: +1.3%; Last -1.3%.
8:30: Jobless claims (Week of February 11): Small backup. Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits have steadily improved over the last several months. The four-week moving average reached a new recovery low of 366k last week. For this week’s report, the consensus expects a small backup to 365k from 358k previously.
Consensus: 365,000; Last: 358,000.
8:30: Producer Price Index (January): Moderate growth. Goldman forecasts that the January Producer Price Index (PPI) increased by 0.2% (month-over-month), with moderate gains in both the core and non-core (food and energy) components.
PPI: GS: +0.2%; Consensus: +0.4%; Last -0.1%.
Core PPI: GS: +0.1%; Consensus: +0.2%; Last +0.3%.
9:00: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on community banking. Q&A unlikely.
10:00: Philadelphia Fed index (February): Steady. GS forecasts that the Philadelphia Fed index was about unchanged in February, holding at a level consistent with about 2.5-3.0% GDP growth. The better-than-expected Empire State manufacturing index reported earlier in the week may point to upside risks.
GS: +7.5; Consensus: +9.0; Last +7.3.
Source: GS