Despite some of the house sales data it looks as if the market is going to look for a pretty robust rise in construction activity.

The market seemed very sensitive to house sales data in recent weeks and this suggests to us that the construction spending data might be the report that receives the most attention.

Last week, chain-store sales came in pretty strong. But if you stripped out gasoline sales from Wal-Mart and Costco it really showed us that consumer spending had started to weaken on a fundamental level.

[Sales of SUVs especially] have been taking it on the chin, ... That phenomenon has pretty much run its course. They powered the industry for close to 10 years.

We should still have a pretty good quarter for consumer spending. January retail sales, excluding autos, were very strong.

We had a pretty turbulent 2005, yet sales still hovered around 17 million. Regardless of the exterior shock to the market, it seems to weather everything. We don't see any pullback (in sales), but we don't see any gains.