Earlier today, housing starts shocked to the upside when they printed at 1.135MM, smashing estimates of 1.015MM, and representing the single biggest monthly jump since 1991. The entire surge was due to one single number.
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.
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And in the case the outlier is still not quite obvious, here is the data since the start of the depression (which has so far been papered over with $22 trillion in central bank "asset" holdings) zoomed in:
[4]
Bottom line: the April surge was the offset of the February plunge, which suggests a renormalization of the trend once the recent volatile data renormalizes. Unless, of course, it rains in the spring when the San Fran Fed's double seasonal adjustments may be inevitable.
