Next week will be a shortened trading week, with U.S. markets closed on Monday for the Juneteenth holiday. We’ll get the latest updates on the housing market, including building permits and housing starts for May, and the NAHB’s Housing Market Index for June. On Wednesday and Thursday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will testify before Congress, as part of his semiannual testimony on monetary policy. On Friday, S&P Global will release its latest Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) reading for June. FedEx, Accenture, Darden Restaurants, and BlackBerry are scheduled to report earnings.
On Monday, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) will release its Housing Market Index for June, a gauge of homebuilders’ confidence. Economists are projecting a reading of 48, down 2 percentage points from 50 in May, which marked the highest reading since July of last year. The index has rebounded so far this year after falling through most of 2022, when a steep rise in mortgage rates cooled housing demand.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Census Bureau will report on May housing starts and building permits, a proxy for home construction and overall supply. Housing starts likely rose slightly to 1.405 million units, up from 1.401 million in April and compared with a two-year low of 1.34 million in January.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will testify before Congress, as part of his semiannual testimony on the state of monetary policy. The testimony will come a week after the FOMC’s latest meeting, where Fed policymakers decided to hold interest rates steady after hiking them ten consecutive times in an effort to cool inflation. While inflation has slowed markedly from last summer’s highs, the Fed’s latest dot plot suggests officials could hike the benchmark fed funds rate twice more this year—to 5.6%—if inflation continues to run hot.