Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Home Sales and Stocks Are Diverging?

Stocks staged an incredible rally on Monday set against a backdrop of the second straight monthly decline in both new and existing home sales.

Existing home sales for January were reported last Wednesday; new home sales came out on Monday morning and were far from encouraging, showing a January decline of 7.8% after December's 9.3% drop.

With a shrug, stock investors ignored yet another sign that the general economy is not operating at optimal efficiency. Apparently, the mindset is such that owning stocks is a better investment than owning a place to live. Maybe when Americans are all renters, they will be encouraged to buy even more stocks, to balance things out, so to speak.

Wall Street may have a mind of its own, though it appears that mind is being led by some very false rhetoric about the strength of the US - and global - economy.

Monday's big gains puts the Dow in position to erase all of the losses from earlier in the month. The NASDAQ is already back above where it began the month.

Dow Jones Industrial Average February Scorecard:

Date Close Gain/Loss Cum. G/L
2/1/18 26,186.71 +37.32 +37.32
2/2/18 25,520.96 -665.75 -628.43
2/5/18 24,345.75 -1,175.21 -1,803.64
2/6/18 24,912.77 +567.02 -1,236.62
2/7/18 24,893.35 -19.42 -1,256.04
2/8/18 23,860.46 -1,032.89 -2288.93
2/9/18 24,190.90 +330.44 -1958.49
2/12/18 24,601.27 +410.37 -1548.12
2/13/18 24,640.45 +39.18 -1508.94
2/14/18 24,893.49 +253.04 -1255.90
2/15/18 25,200.37 +306.88 -949.02
2/16/18 25,219.38 +19.01 -930.01
2/20/18 24,964.75 -254.63 -1184.64
2/21/18 24,797.78 -166.97 -1351.61
2/22/18 24,962.48 +164.70 -1186.91
2/23/18 25,309.99 +347.51 -839.40
2/26/18 25,709.27 +399.28 -440.12

At the Close, Monday, January 26, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 25,709.27, +399.28 (+1.58%)
NASDAQ: 7,421.46, +84.07 (+1.15%)
S&P 500: 2,779.60, +32.30 (+1.18%)
NYSE Composite: 12,999.62, +115.51 (+0.90%)

No comments: