So far the only data series that are maintaining their strength as the days stretch out into spring are of the jobs and employment variety. The manufacturing stuff and the consumer/retail stuff is good, not great. Q4 earnings were mixed and Q1 earnings, coming any day now, will be announced against the backdrop of $100 oil and $4-plus gasoline for almost the entire reporting period.
The bright spot that was housing appears to be starting to slide again. Which sucks because the housing “improvement” was an enormous part of the bull case. Also, seasonally housing is supposed to be kicking ass right now. But eagle-eyed Joe Weisenthal notes that every single housing market data point this week was punk:
Read more: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/03/reality-check-2/
The bright spot that was housing appears to be starting to slide again. Which sucks because the housing “improvement” was an enormous part of the bull case. Also, seasonally housing is supposed to be kicking ass right now. But eagle-eyed Joe Weisenthal notes that every single housing market data point this week was punk:
- Monday: Homebuilder sentiment missed, coming in at 28 vs. expectations of 30.
- On Tuesday, housing starts came in just below expectations.
- On Wednesday, mortgage applications for the week fell 7.4%. Also existing home sales came in at an annualized pace of 4.59 million, vs. expectations of 4.61 million.
- On Thursday, the FHFA house price index showed no gain vs. expectations of 0.%. Last month was revised from a 0.7% gain to just 0.1%.
- And then today we got New Homes Sales of just 313K vs. expectations of 325K. Also today, the major homebuilder KB Homes reported a big miss, and the stock is getting crushed.
Read more: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/03/reality-check-2/
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