ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Housing Market Intro and Summary This edition of “What Happened in the Housing Market” is once again without data on housing starts and new home sales because of the previous shutdown of the Federal government. Yet, plenty of data dropped to confirm the on-going sluggishness of the housing market. Poor responses to key earnings report … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary This edition of “What Happened in the Housing Market” is truncated again because the shutdown of the Federal government. Yet, the shutdown did not prevent the stocks of home builders from outperforming the rest of the stock market for the month. Optimism over lower interest rates, improved affordability metrics, and … Read more
The bearish to bullish reversal ended for home builder stocks with a return to bear market territory. Today, October 9, 2025, the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF (ITB) dropped under the threshold that defines a bear market: 20% below the all-time high (see chart below). The 2.6% slide on the day is part of a … Read more
Housing Market Intro and Summary What happened in the housing market in April, 2025? Macro-economic headlines and conditions dominated the environment with tariff pressures and chaos at the center. The economic uncertainty cascading from the burden of tariff policy permeated results from homebuilder and consumer sentiment, housing starts, and existing home sales. New home sales … Read more
Stock Market Commentary We finally got a breather: a calm weekday and a holiday for both the US stock and bond markets. The break felt more relieving than even the tariff pause, a sign of just how tense things have been in the markets. Market breadth was my major headline as twice in the week, … Read more