The US housing market looks steaming hot, at least according to the annualized level of new home sales which jumped by 17.5% to 733K.Is this an outlier? It may be so. The figure for November was revised down to 624K, quite a big change from 685K originally published.

The final read of consumer confidence from the University of Michigan was to the downside: 95.9 against 96.8 originally published. The Conditions component is down to 113.8 and the Expectations one is at 84.3

The US dollar is ticking higher on the news, with USD/JPY trading at 113.42. The moves are relatively shallow and it seems that all the excitement is in digital currencies.

Sales of new homes were expected to slide by 4.7% in November, dropping to 654K after a very high level of 685K in October, before revisions.

Earlier we received more important US data: durable goods orders fell short of expectations with a weak rise in the headline and drops in the core measures. The Fed’s favorite inflation figure remained stable at 1.5%.