This morning’s disappointing new home sales release for January reiterates the trend I outlined in my piece published on Real Money this morning titled ‘Housing Recovery Starts to Buckle’. I continue to believe housing will face a number of hurdles this year, and is unlikely to enjoy anything more than a modest, though bumpy, recovery.
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What had been an improving trend in initial jobless claims has hit a roadblock with claims rising this morning to by 22K to 496K . Recent volatility can be attributed to everything from weather to a backlog of claims in California, but in the end still points to further deterioration for the monthly employment report. […]
January’s record low new home sales data has made it fairly obvious the government’s extended/expanded home buyer tax credit has yet to have a significant impact on the sector. The pace of new home sales plummeted by 11.2% to a level of 309K in January. The months supply of new homes rose sharply reaching 9.1 […]
This morning the Case-Shiller HPI dropped by -1.1% in Q4 on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. The index was down -2.51% on an annual basis. This compares to a 3.31% quarterly rise in the third quarter. I continue to believe that housing prices will come under continued pressure throughout 2010 after the expiration of the government’s […]
This week I am going to keep a close eye on several housing reports, which include January’s new (Wed) and existing (Fri) home sales along with December’s Case Shiller HPI (Tue)–December is the first month after what would have been the expiration of the first time home buyer tax credit. December’s home prices likely came […]
Chairman Bernanke recently indicated that the Fed was considering an increase in the discount rate, which tends to mean it is going to happen and soon. It happened, the Fed this evening announced an increase in the discount rate to 0.75% from 0.50%, moving it closer to its pre-crisis spread to the Fed Funds Rate […]
I am on vacation in Seattle this week, and will have a limited number of updates on Fiat and Twitter. Please contact me with any questions or recommendations on restaurants or bars (with good beer selections) in the Seattle/Redmond area.
It looks like over the short-term the Fed will be using interest on excess reserves as its primary monetary policy tool to aid in its removal of excess liquidity from the market. This is the interest rates paid to banks on excess reserves held at the Fed. These comments continue to indicate accommodative monetary policy […]
ABC News (Australia)is reporting that, “A Reserve Bank official says the head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, is leaving a Sydney meeting of central bankers early to attend an ECB council meeting.” I expect this means investors could anticipate some market moving news related to troubled EU nations over the next few days.
According to CNBC, James Bullard,President Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, indicated in an interview today that *he does not believe the Fed will begin hiking interest rates, until after they start selling off some assets. He anticipates that the Fed could begin selling assets during the second half of this year. Bullard had this […]