3 numbers to watch: initial jobless, housing starts, Philly Fed

Stocks in the US and Asian sessions were down as concerns over the delay of Greece's bailout weighed on sentiment. Tensions are rising among European politicians after what Greek President Karolos Papoulias said last night about Germany's finance minister: “I don’t accept insults to my country by Mr. Schaeuble”. Comments such as this and the continuing delays from European finance ministers to accept Greece's austerity are adding to investors' uncertainty.

The minutes from the FOMC meeting released last night showed that the Federal Reserve is still divided over monetary policy with a few members still in favour of additional asset purchases to accommodate the economy while other members want to see more deterioating conditions before easing monetary policies.

With lots of interesting economic data in the US today we have chosen the three most important numbers to watch:

• Initial jobless claims to continue strong path? To many economists the US labour market really has the surprise factor and initial jobless claims have trended down to levels not seen since the first quarter of 2008, indicating a labour market that has defied weakness in Europe as emerging markets have offset some of the slowdown. Today, consensus is looking for a print of 365K, slightly up from 358K.
• Housing starts to rise to 675K: US housing has been a drag on the economy for many years now and despite signs of economic recovery and exceptional low mortgage rates, the housing market has not yet snapped back to its previous activity levels. However, the National Association of Homebuilders Market Index rose yesterday to levels not seen since mid 2007 indicating that prospective buyers are returning. Consensus expects 675K housing starts annually as of January up from 657K in December.
• Philly Fed points to acceleration: When this index which tracks the business outlook dropped to below minus 20 back in August 2011 several economists feared it marked the beginning of negative economic growth but the index snapped back rapidly going into positive territory already in October. Today analysts are expecting the index to rise to 9.0 in February, up from 7.3, signalling further expansion in the US economy.