Retail sales report is much better than the last month's. Surprisingly, the price of gasoline went down sharply though it is part of retail sales. So in a much larger sense, consumer spent their money more than the average on something else other than gasoline because sales still stayed the same.

A big surprise this week is the new construction report which was up significantly in the month of December, 2012. 954,00 housing units were started the last month which was strikingly high. Jobless claims also went down by 37,000 to 335,000. Anything under 350,000 indicates that the job market is starting to grow. Apparently, the US is in a stronger path this year along with China's growth in GDP. This might lead to a good economic recovery for the US including Europe.

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