The S&P futures leapt to finish with more extraordinary gains after Housing Starts and Building Permits came in better than expected. Since the economic crisis was triggered by the downfall of the U. S. housing market, any uptick in residential construction serves as a strong catalyst to the upside.

However, the surprisingly optimistic number was driven by an increase in the construction of apartment buildings. With a staggering amount of foreclosures, there should be no shock that more families are opting to live in multi-bedroom apartments to weather the storm in residential and credit markets.

The 30 Year T-Bond futures headed lower yesterday, exercising their negative correlation with U. S. equities. However, the 30 Year futures have caught themselves just above March lows in an effort to `hold the fort' so to speak.

Despite the resilience of the 30 Year to stay within a reasonable range, the declining purchases of U. S. treasuries by China will weigh down on the futures for some time. China is running a lower trade surplus due to plummeting exports, resulting in declining foreign exchange reserves.

Crude futures continued their impressive climb after jumping above our 2nd tier trend line, but backed away from the highly psychological $50/bbl level as anticipated. January 26 highs are intact for the time being and are the only obstacle, a weak one at that, preventing crude from challenging 2009 highs.

The S&P futures are on a roll, always a strong catalyst to send crude prices higher due to improved expectations concerning production and consequently consumption of energy. However, whether crude rises through $50/bbl and runs towards $55/bbl will depend on the weekly crude oil inventory report coming today.

Gold continues to drift downward, sliding below our 2nd tier uptrend line. However, the precious metal has yet to make a drastic move to the downside considering the furious rally taking place on Wall Street.

Therefore, investors continue to display reluctance in dropping gold below our 3rd tier downtrend line and the highly psychological $900/oz level. Therefore, the uptrend lives to see another day.

On the other hand, if the precious metal should sink below the previously mentioned critical fundamental supports, we would expect a heightened near-term selloff.

Fundamentally, our $922.92/oz support turns resistance while we hold our resistances of $928.57/oz, $932.04/oz, and $932.42/oz.

The EUR/USD is still battling with March highs while jammed in the 1.30 zone. The Euro is enjoying relative strength against the Dollar and Pound after Germany's economic sentiment came in better than analyst expectations.

The EUR/GBP is breaking out to the upside in reaction to horrible economic data from Britain. However, we feel yesterday's consumer sentiment data may be a lagging indicator considering Germany showed production fell off a cliff last week.

Sure enough the Cable crumbled after dropping below the psychological 1.40 cushion yet is bouncing off our previous bottom-end of 1.3856. The weakness comes after a slew of negative news concerning Britain.

To get started, the IMF projected the British economy will not turn around until 2011, highlighting the severity of the situation. The Claimant Count Change (CCC) number leaves us speechless. Not only did Britain revise the last CCC number upwards, but today's release is disastrous at best.

The CCC came in at roughly 138,400 compared to analyst estimates of 84,500. Hence, British unemployment is rising at an accelerated rate, blowing past even the worst-case expectations.