Well, we are well off the bottom for this year. About half of the fall during Obama's reign has been eclipsed by recent gains. We are 15% up from our lows this year. A nice lift today was attributed to some better than expected news on the real estate front. Adding to the bounce are some financial institutions saying they were profitable the first two months of 2009, as in Citigroup, JP Morgan and Bank of America. I find the latter news hard to swallow, but we will see at the end of first quarter 2009 where things stand. Hopefully they are not just blowing smoke or doing some cooking. Overall, the recent news and gains look promising.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=atjt1jiU8GCk&refer=home
Nonetheless, I need to add some caveats to the above. The most knowledgeable blog on real estate that I know of is Calculated Risk. The folks there are fixated on stats and they provide them out the whazoo (sp?). While they too are hoping for a real estate bottom this year, they do not see it here yet. Inventories still too high (the new home supply was at a 13.3 month record in January) and sales too low for this to happen. And they give the stats - and nice charts - to back this up. I must point out that certain geographic regions will rebound before others and certain "national" builders focus on certain geographic regions, so some big builders may rebound before others. Don't make the mistake that one rebounding means all will. One rebounding is good news and a start, but do not finish your research there.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/03/housing-starts-is-this-bottom.html
That is all I have for now other than to say that I am not seeing the signs much differently than I did a month ago. So why the rally? You figure it out. Or you can look at the Four Bad Bears chart at Calculated Risk and realize even the worst of times has rallies. We just need to figure out if the present rally is real or a dead-cat-bounce. You know where I stand.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/03/stock-market-update.html
Disclosures: None
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John Crudele in the NY Post had another possible reason for the gains....
"Remember that this is one of those options expiration weeks - a so-called triple-witching hour to boot, when stock-index futures, stock-index options and regular stock options all expire.
As I've been reporting for years, this is a time when stock prices tend to move higher entirely for technical reasons.
And as with all witches - the Wall Street kind and the Halloween type - be careful not to fall under their spell."
Here's the link http://www.nypost.com/seven/03172009/business/could_americans_savings_rate_be_5___not__159944.htm?page=0
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