New Home Sales Rise. Consumer Confidence Falls.

Jobless Claims (week ended 12/22/2012)

– Initial Claims 350,000.  Previous was revised to 362,000
– 4-week Moving Average 356,750

Data for last week may not be reliable. There were 2 days off and data was collected for only 31 states.  The others were estimated.

New Home Sales (November 2012)

– Sales were 377,000 (seasonally adjusted, annualized)
– Previous was 368,000

This is the highest level of New Home Sales since April 2010.  The is an underlying backlog of demand for Housing Starts and Sales due to population increase plus slow Housing Starts for the past 4 years.

Consumer Confidence (December 2012)

– Confidence fell to 65.1.  Previous was 73.7 and that was revised down to 71.5. This one can be blamed on the inability of politicians to get anything done regarding the fiscal cliff.