US CPI, Housing Starts, Building Permits & Initial Jobless Claims - mixed reading forms a top

Today on Thursday January 19th at 8:30 EST (13:30 GMT) the Consumer Price Inflation figures were released from the USA. This also came out with a bunch of other data such as Housing Starts, Building Permits and the weekly Jobless data, the Initial Jobless Claims and Continuing Claims. So there was alot of data to go through was it was quite difficult to get a clear trade based on the numbers. The CPI was flat, the Housing Numbers were weaker but the Initial Jobless Claims made a new low, breaking December 2011 low which had just broken the late February 2011 low. Last week this number did rebound to 399k, a higher number being bad in this case, but then this week it came back down. This 'much better than xx months/ x years' type headline seemed to steal the limelight, everyone knows that Housing is bad anyhow, but if employment is better then the economy has a better chance of recovery. The morning had been pretty risk-on with good earnings reports from Morgan Stanley and Bank of American, both those stocks jumped over 6%. Here is the data:

US CPI Ex Food & Energy m/m
Estimates- Median: +0.1% Average: +0.1% Range: -0.1% to +0.2%
Actual: +0.1% Prior: +0.2% No Revision

US Headline CPI m/m
Estimates- Median: +0.1% Average: +0.1% Range: -0.1% to +0.3%
Actual: 0.0% Prior: 0.0% No Revision

US Core CPI y/y
Estimates- Median: +2.2% Average: +2.2% Range: +2.0% to +2.3%
Actual: +2.2% Prior: +2.2% No Revision

US Headline CPI y/y
Estimates- Median: +3.0% Average: +3.0% Range: +2.9% to +3.2%
Actual: +3.0% Prior: +3.4% No Revision

US Housing Starts
Estimates- Median: 680k Average: +682k Range: +625k to +723k
Actual: +657k Prior: +685k No Revision

US Housing Starts MOM%
Estimates- Median: -0.7% Average: -0.5% Range: -8.8% to +5.6%
Actual: -4.1% Prior: +9.3% Revised: +9.1%

US Building Permits
Estimates- Median: +679k Average: +680k Range: +640k to +728k
Actual: +679k Prior: +681k Revised: +680k

US Building Permits MOM%
Estimates- Median: -0.2% Average: 0.0% Range: -5.9% to +7.1%
Actual: -0.1% Prior: +5.7% Revised: +5.6%

US Initial Jobless Claims
Estimates- Median: +384k Average: +383k Range: +363k to +405k
Actual: +352k Prior: +399k Revised: +402k

US Continuing Claims
Estimates- Median: +3590k Average: +3577k Range: +3500k to +3630k
Actual: +3432k Prior: +3628k Revised: +3647k

So 1st chart is the EMini S&P 500 future 1 minute chart which basically show a whipsaw as the market digested the positive and negative aspects of the data:

Next is the USDJPY 1 minute chart which after a little whiggle did catch a bid, this one is the safest forex pair to trade on USA news but it doesn't always move that many pips:

finally is a 30 second chart of the CADJPY, this one usually follows the stock indices quite well and when good US data gives a boost to risk appetite this one can rally. However inflation is difficult these days. In the past high CPI meant that the Fed would more likely to raise interest rates which would strengthen a currency, however sometimes the stock market would not like higher rates. In the current economic situation however, high CPI means the Fed is less likely to do more Quantitative Easing and the market will rally if there is more QE but the US dollar will weaken.