The Seasonal Trade On Home Builders Faces Shaky Prospects

(This is an excerpt from an article I originally published on Seeking Alpha on December 13, 2015. Click here to read the entire piece.) Almost a month ago, analysts from KBW described a seasonal trade on home builders. {snip} I took a slightly different perspective on this seasonality to make the pattern stand out and … Read more

Tri Pointe Group Puts Its Balance Sheet On the Line

In its Q3 2015 earnings report, TRI Pointe Group, Inc. (TPH) reported $97.0M in cash and cash equivalents. Thanks to real estate inventories, total assets come to $3.1B. Source: TRI Pointe Group, Inc. On January 27, 2016, TPH decided to put that balance sheet on the line by authorizing a buyback of $100M that is … Read more

Chart Carnage: Home Builders Under Duress

When I decided to start writing a monthly summary of the status of the housing market, I had assumed that housing was going to remain in or settle into a general holding pattern. I assumed little was going to happen to the upside or the downside for a while. Under those conditions, it did not … Read more

LGI Homes Reports A Strong December And Takes the Edge off Recent Sell-Off

At the end of 2015, I wrote about the critical tests facing LGI Homes (LGIH). After another strong monthly closing report, LGIH seems more likely to pass the test of financial performance in coming earnings reports, but the technical test remains in place. LGIH reported record results for a single month in December, 2015: 433 … Read more

Housing Market Review – A Coiled Spring (December, 2015)

The housing market is moving in slow motion. The recovery is in place but locked into low gear. Until conditions change materially, it makes sense to place my coverage of the overall housing market into a monthly cadence. The reporting loses a bit of timeliness, but it should gain more cohesiveness with more connected dots. … Read more