Wednesday November 19, 2008
Navivest

We are looking for a rebound in stocks after a volatile week in trading that has seen the Dow trade in an almost 800 point range, but we’re still trading only about a hundred point lower than where we were trading last Wednesday.

We do have a somewhat active economic calendar today that could dictate the direction of the stock market – possibly downward. On tap, we have Building Permits, Housing Starts and FOMC minutes.

It is probably a safe assumption that the Building Permits and Housing Starts numbers will be disappointing, but at this stage, no one is expecting that builders were going gang busters applying for permits and putting up new housing.

So maybe the numbers could actually help stocks move to the upside, as whatever is released today, will be old news that should have been already been discounted.

Tags: Building Permits  Housing Starts  Economic Calendar

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce, reported today that Housing Starts which measures the number of residential units on which construction commenced, dropped in August to an annualized rate of 895,000 units. This is the lowest level since January of 1991. The August number also represents a 6.2% sequential decline from July. Forecasters were looking for 950,000.

We also got Building Permits numbers which showed a sequential decline of 8.9% and an annualized rate of 854,000. Forecasters were looking for 925,000.

To say the numbers show an economy in crisis, would be overstating the obvious. Stock futures which were already trending downward indicating a lower open for the stock market, accelerated their declines after the numbers were released.

Tags: Housing Starts  Building Permits

We have three major pieces of economic news on tap for today. We will be getting:

8:30 AM - PPI (Producer Price Index ) for July 2008 - PPI measures the price of products using the wholesale price.

8:30 AM - Core PPI for July 2008 - Same as PPI, but energy and food prices which are considered volatile, are left out.

8:30 AM - Housing Starts for July 2008 - This measures the number of residential building projects that were started in the reporting period.

8:30 AM - Building Permits for July 2008 - This also measures the number of residential building projects that were started in the reporting period. However, not all areas of the country require building permits, so housings starts numbers are released as well, to give a more accurate guage.

The economic calendar for today has the potential to move markets, with building permits and housing starts more likely than not, to show that the housing market keeps weakening.

economic calendar  housing starts  building permits