homebuilders

I have a lot of threads to cover today. So let’s get right into it. New home sales. I want to start in the US first because the macro data backdrop is good. The first piece of data here is actually a bit soft and says that residential…

I have three areas I want to explore today: earnings reports, China and Europe. The earnings reports are mixed but generally good enough to support continued job growth and economic momentum through this fourth quarter. I also want to deep…

When the Eurozone moved toward the backloaded austerity paradigm, last Spring, I started to change my tune on Europe. In June, I wrote that we should watch second derivatives in the Eurozone, because the change in change numbers are a…

Yesterday, the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index for Canada was released. It showed that 12-month home price inflation in Canada was down to 2.0%, the lowest level since November 2009. And given the huge amount of…

Last Tuesday I said then that the debt ceiling fight would come first but that default on US public debt would be a step too far - and so Republicans would capitulate, forcing them to put their efforts into the sequester cuts. The biggest…

Economic data in the US is not trending down. It is stabilizing and perhaps trending marginally higher. We have seen a slew of data showing that the US data are outperforming expectations. The data for the housing market in the United…

The banks are slowly admitting losses, but Bloomberg's summary is of a slow recognition. Even so, writedowns have left the banks stranded: unable to make loans. Up until now, it appears, the banks and the government were able to carry the…

As I first described here in late April, the Spanish bailout is looking like a bailout of Spanish banks instead of the sovereign. Spain's debt to GDP is still relatively low and so the thinking is that the sovereign debt problems there are…

Here’s a great chart from the BLS showing the collapse of construction employment from May 2006-10. No surprise the largest declines are in the four housing bubble states — Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and California. Stunning employment in…

Pressure is mounting on Spain. The 10-year yield today is essentially back to where it was when the ECB broadened its sovereign bond purchase scheme to include Spanish and Italian bonds. On Oct 27, the 10-year yield was near 5.33%. Today it…