The US markets were up last week and recovered some of their losses from the week before. However, a mid-week bogus tweet about explosions at the White House saw the markets correct more than 1% and then quickly reverse once it became clear the tweet was false. The quick response in the markets to the false news provides proof that computer trading is becoming more prevalent and immediate in its response to news becoming public.

Existing home sales data came in soft last Monday. However, analysts are ok with the soft sales data since they understand that supply is low on the market, thereby driving up prices. As prices increase due to a low supply, it will only be a matter of time before developers build new homes to increase the supply, thereby increasing new home sales. Furthermore, April is historically a big month for homes coming onto the market.

Initial jobless claims fell in the April 20 week, down 16,000 to a 339,000 level. While the jobless claims reduction was minor, it was welcomed positive news from traders and analysts after mostly soft economic and earnings data over the past few months.

First quarter 2013 GDP figures were announced late last week and showed the US economy grew at a meager 2.5%. This was clearly a better number then the Q4 2012 figure of 0.4% growth but was still below the economic consensus of 3.1%. Demand growth was most sluggish in the public sector around government spending while the bright spot was consumer spending. Thankfully, the US GDP figure is driven almost 70% by consumers, therefore it was encouraging to see the US consumer still spending after the expiration of the payroll tax cut.