Archive for September 25th, 2007
No Confidence in Consumer Confidence
Consumer confidence numbers came in low. So? Does it really tell me anything that 5,000 people didn’t respond to a poll the way some people expected? I shouldn’t even answer. Consumer’s may be spending less and we will find that out, but why do we even have this number?
| Confidence Index – Level | |
| Actual | 99.8 |
| Consensus | 104.0 |
| Consensus Range | 100.0 to 105.5 |
| Previous | 105.0 |
If it was 60, maybe that would say something. but 99.8 and didn’t fit into the 100.0-105.5 consensus range is just silly.
Existing home sales came in as expected, which is to say weak, but that is the environment we are in and will continue to be in for at least another 6 months.
| Existing Home Sales – Level – SAAR | |
| Actual | 5.500M |
| Consensus | 5.5M |
| Consensus Range | 5.3M to 5.7M |
| Previous | 5.750 M |
After the LEN call, we know homebuilders are no where near a buy, institutions who still owned it were selling and we should be net sellers of this whole space.
Volitility
John Najerian was on Bloomberg talking about him seeing the VIX, a measure of volitility, as calming down and going to 14-22 for the next few weeks and months. I think this is a product of the uptick rule being removed and the slow downturn of volitility that has been shown to follow the removal of this. Too bad the media doesn’t talk more about this.
