Stephen Stanley December Quotations

It is a little early to eulogize the housing sector. Look for any deterioration in starts, sales, etc., to be more gradual than the weather-depressed December starts tally would suggest.

Ironically, with all this strength, the net effect of these data on the fourth-quarter GDP number could be flat or possibly even marginally negative. This is because durable goods inventories were flat, which should more or less offset the positive influence of the stronger-than-anticipated December shipments figures. For first quarter GDP, however, these data are unambiguously positive.

The durable goods report for December was extremely strong. The headline rise of 1.3 percent was decent, but some of the underlying statistics were even more impressive.