This was a light economic news week for the U.S. economy. The most important news came from the Conference Board, which released the latest LEI and CEI numbers on Thursday. On Wednesday, the Census Bureau released building permits and housing starts data. The markets saw modest advances on the back of solid earnings reports. Overall, the adjectives “modest” and “moderate” continue to best describe the economy and markets.

On Thursday, the conference board released the latest leading and coincident economic indicators. LEI’s increased 0.6%; CEIs were up 0.2%. Nine of 10 leading indicators increased; the number also received a solid boost from the three industrial activity indicators. All four coincident indicators rose. The combined reading of both points to continued modest growth. However, there is an interesting split occurring in the six-month rolling averages for both:

The six-month rolling average for the leading indicators has been above 2% for the last six months while the same reading for the coincident indicators has fluctuated around 1%. It’s reasonable to expect the size of the leading numbers to eventually show up in the coincident numbers, pulling them to higher levels. But that hasn’t happened.Instead, the coincident numbers continue pointing to modest but consistent growth.

On Wednesday, the Census Bureau released the latest housing starts and building permits data. Permits increased 7.4% M/M and 5.1% Y/Y while starts rose 8.3% M/M and 2.1% Y/Y. Looking at the longer trend data, the housing market appears to be expanding at a stable rate. Let’s start by looking at building permits:

The top chart shows total permits for the last 10 years. This number has been increasing between 1.1 million and 1.3 million for the last two years. The bottom chart breaks that number down into one unit, 2-4 unit and 5+ unit numbers.1-unit permits (blue, left scale) are in a gentle uptrend. The other two sub-sectors are moving sideways.