U.S. stock futures were flat as investors digest the housing starts and Producer Price Index data.
Housing starts unexpectedly jumped 22.2% in February to a 5.83 million unit pace. That compares to the consensus estimate of 450,000, but is still 47.3% below the year-ago level. Multi-family units were the primary source of the increase, surging 82.3%.
In other economic news, the core rate in PPI rose 0.2% for February. This follows gains of 0.2% in December and 0.4% in January. Total PPI was up 0.1% as food and energy roughly offset each other. The overall data reflect a year-over-year decrease of 1.3% while the core rate still holds at 4.0% but is expected to drop. We will get more inflation data tomorrow with the release of the CPI.
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