The piece yesterday on U.S. housing was based on June’s numbers. New-home sales data came out yesterday, and it was anything but encouraging. Year-over-year, sales (seasonally adjusted annual rate) rose 12.2 percent but fell 2.4 percent month-over-month. The latter helps … Continued
There was a lot of excitement last week when housing starts/building permits data were released for July. Starts surged 15.7 percent month-over-month and 21.7 percent year-over-year to 1.1mn units (seasonally adjusted annual rate). Multi-family (five units or more) easily outran … Continued
A month ago, we pointed out a divergence between 10- and two-year Treasury yield spread, which peaked as 2013 was unwinding, and financial stocks, which had ceased to track the spread and were rallying. Going back nearly 18 years, the … Continued
Two members of the Monetary Policy Committee, the Bank of England’s interest rate-setting committee, voted to raise interest rates by 25 basis points in August, the minutes released yesterday showed. Market participants were taken by surprise. They have been conditioned … Continued
At hedgopia, we try to be as objective as possible. Currently, this blogger is bearish insofar as U.S. equities and economy are concerned. Nevertheless, as someone famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What would you do, … Continued
What is going on in the jobs market the past several months is reviving hopes that better days are ahead. There is a lot we can point to in order to validate how anemic the recovery has been post-Great Recession. … Continued
Chinese stocks have been on fire! From an intra-day low of 36.62 on June 24, FXI (iShares Trust FTSE-Xinhua China 25 Index Fund) shot up nearly 13 percent to 41.30 in a little over a month (by July 29, to … Continued
Non-residential fixed investment contributed 0.68 percent to the four-percent growth in U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter. A much larger 1.69 percent came from personal consumption expenditures. Back in 1Q08, non-residential fixed investment peaked at $1.99tn, preceded by … Continued
NYSE margin debt shot back up in June, surging 5.9 percent month-over-month to $464.3bn, just a touch below February’s all-time high of $465.7bn. This follows a down March and April and flattish May. In recent months, action on the Nasdaq … Continued
Depending on how mature an economic cycle is, different sectors, and industries within them, act differently. Some lead, some lag, yet others are coincident. Investors gravitate toward sectors such as technology and consumer discretionary when they are more optimistic and … Continued