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 

Housing Starts as Percent of Population

The 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

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 from that data.

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

Mike "Mish" Shedlock