Weaker than expected US housing figures have added to the market's cautious mood.
Existing home sales surged 4.3% in January to a one and a half year high of 4.57m. But this was lower than the 4.65m economists had been forecasting, and there was also a downward revision to December's figure, down from the original 4.61m to 4.38m. In fact, December showed a 0.5% fall rather than the 5% increase which was reported.
All this has helped send the Dow Jones Industrial Average around 12 points lower, while the FTSE 100 is currently 11.03 points lower at 5917.17. But Annalisa Piazza at Newedge Strategy saw positive points in the figures:
Today's data confirm the relative positive momentum for the US housing market. The level of activity remains "depressed", as the Fed continued to described it. However, we see signs that housing activity is slowly re-emerging from the abyss seen in the past few years.
