Following today's better than expected housing numbers (See Housing Starts and Permits Surge Most in Seven Years) Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives pinged me with these comments.

Mish - I started tracking these for the first time today - complete historical data. These are two of the noisiest series of all time.

Take a look at the charts, especially the population-adjusted versions. You'll see why you need at least a 3-month moving average to get an idea of the real trend direction and slope. And check out where the latest data points put us relative to the total series.

Starts: New Residential Housing Starts Surge in April
Permits: New Residential Building Permits Rise 10.1% in April

Bottom line: take the April data with a grain of salt ... maybe a tablespoon full.

Privately Owned Housing Starts

New Privately Owned Housing Units Started

Housing Starts as Percent of Population

Housing Starts as a Percent of the Population
above from Doug Short

Here is a chart and comment I posted yesterday in Home Builders Optimistic Despite Decline in Traffic; Housing Market Index Declines.

NAHB Housing Market Index

Housing Market Index through April 2015)

If you ask the builders, sales conditions are very good with a score of 59. Sales expectations rose to an excellent score of 64. Meanwhile, actual lookers score a very poor 39.

Average it all together and you get the totally useless chart above.

Housing Market Index Components

Yesterday afternoon I asked the NAHB for the subcomponent data. Here is a chart I put together today from that data.

NAHB HMI

Note the actual traffic of prospective buyers vs. sales expectations six months out.

By Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

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Mike Shedlock / Mish is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management . Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction.

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I do weekly podcasts every Thursday on HoweStreet and a brief 7 minute segment on Saturday on CKNW AM 980 in Vancouver.

When not writing about stocks or the economy I spends a great deal of time on photography and in the garden. I have over 80 magazine and book cover credits. Some of my Wisconsin and gardening images can be seen at MichaelShedlock.com .

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