Investing.com – Although the number of housing starts issued in the U.S. unexpectedly fell in January, the percentage drop was due to an upward revision to prior data and the number of units along with building permits both beat expectations, bolstering optimism over the health of the U.S. housing sector, official data showed Thursday.
In a report, the U.S. Commerce Department said that housing starts fell by 2.6% from the month before to hit a seasonally adjusted 1.246 million units last month from December’s total of 1.279 million units, an upward revision from the initial 1.226 million. Analysts had expected January’s reading to slip from the initial reading of the last month of 2017 to 1.222 million units.
Meanwhile, the number of building permits issued jumped by 4.6% to a seasonally adjusted 1.285 million units last month from 1.228 million (initially 1.210 million) in December. Economists had forecast permits to rise by just 0.2% to 1.230 million units in January.
After the report, which was released simultaneous with weekly jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index, EUR/USD was trading at 1.0646 from around 1.0649 ahead of the release of the data, GBP/USD was at 1.2501 from 1.2505 earlier, while USD/JPY was at 113.64 from 113.56 earlier.
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, traded at 100.66, compared to 100.61 previously.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock futures were trading flat with mixed signs. The blue-chip Dow futures were unchanged, the S&P 500 futures dropped 2 points, or 0.06%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures inched up 3 points, or 0.06%.
Elsewhere, in the commodities market, gold futures traded at $1,239.55 a troy ounce, compared to $1,239.35 ahead of the data, while crude oil traded at $53.41 a barrel from $53.40 earlier.