The Boock Report

New home sales in October totaled 999k, 24k more than expected and is little changed from September which saw a print of 1mm, (revised up by 40k). Go back to late November 2006 to see this level of sales for newly built homes. When looking back over the past 5 months since May when things started to reopen, it's been the Midwest, South and West that has seen the best …

[Read more...] about Home sales/Consumer stats

After mentioning the CNN Fear/Greed index earlier which is now at 88 out of 100, the Investors Intelligence measure of sentiment is uber extreme and this didn't include yesterday's rally. Bulls jumped to 64.6 from 59.6 and that is the most number of Bulls since January 2018 (right before the Vol trade blew up). Bears fell down to 17.2 from 18.2 and that is the least …

[Read more...] about II now at extreme bullishness/Some data

Yesterday's retest of the intraday high of November 9th, the day of the Pfizer vaccine news, brought with it a lot of market ebullience as measured by the CNN Fear/Greed index which closed at 88, 'Extreme Greed'. //money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/ . I can't remember the last time I saw a 13 pt one day increase. This metric is not measuring how people feel but …

[Read more...] about Sentiment/Commodities/Housing

S&P CoreLogic said its September 20 city index showed a 6.6% y/o/y home price increase. Double digit gains in Phoenix and Seattle led the way while Chicago, NY and SF showed the slowest rate of gains but still multiples of the level of CPI at 4-6%. While the Federal Reserve continues to look for inflation, look no further. This is great for the seller and for …

[Read more...] about Home price gains accelerate further/Consumer Confidence/Mfr’g

After a Fed career of encouraging government, businesses, and households to borrow, borrow, borrow via easy money/QE, Janet Yellen now gets to eat her own cooking. I see this as nothing but US dollar negative. With further dollar weakness and now a vaccine, I see no reason why the CRB commodity index can't get back to the 180+ area, especially now that oil prices …

[Read more...] about Yellen, US dollar/Business confidence in Europe

The US Markit November manufacturing and services PMI rose 1.6 pts m/o/m to 57.9 with manufacturing up by 3.3 pts m/o/m to 56.7 and services higher by .8 pts to 57.7. With services Markit said “Contributing to the steep rise in business activity was a faster increase in new orders at service providers…A number of survey respondents noted that new domestic client …

[Read more...] about US PMI again higher, as are price pressures

So the US dollar index (about half is the euro) is finally breaking to the lowest level since late April, albeit by a hair. The continued weakness is due to a few factors such as the big picture ones like the exploding US debts and deficits and rising current account deficit along with the short term one that we're seeing a risk on trade on the heels of the very …

[Read more...] about Gold, silver, bitcoin/Some data

Positives 1)Moderna's vaccine has 95% efficacy and Pfizer confirmed that theirs does too. 2)While no government program or new Fed facility ever really dies, it was good to see some temporarily put to bed.   3)Continuing claims fell to 6.37mm from 6.8mm in the week prior and that was slightly less than the estimate of 6.4mm. Continuing claims for PUA fell …

[Read more...] about Succinct Summation of the Week’s Events – 11/20

Here are a few of my thoughts on what Steve Mnuchin wrote to Jay Powell: 1)As Mnuchin is about to leave DC he wants to say 'mission accomplished.'  2)With many of these facilities barely being used, he wants the money back to allocate to a possible fiscal deal. 3)Once a government program is created, it never really dies. 4)Good riddance to the Primary and …

[Read more...] about Thoughts on Mnuchin letter/Other

Existing home sales in October, likely reflecting contract signings done in the summer, totaled 6.85mm, above the estimate of 6.47mm and up from 6.57mm in September. That is now quickly approaching the 2005 peak of 7.25mm. All four regions saw m/o/m increases. The number of days on the market was just 24 vs 26 in September and 27 in August. The problem remains …

[Read more...] about Housing demand robust but so are the price gains