Biggest year over year decline in 18 years. It has nothing to do with weather. Pure horseshit. This is the result of tighter lending standards and, more ominously, the loss of the consumer's opinion that housing is a 'no lose' investment proposition. Bye-bye consumer liquidity.
but next month they'll "be better than expected" and market that never falls with bad #'s will sky to 14k. its time to end this crap. earnings soft at best and economy going down. dow 11k min to wake the manipulators up
At the end of the day this is a huge disappointment and a very bad sign. This is the confirmation that nobody wanted to see. Contraction cycle should now begin and the spring market will probably disappoint. Beginning of the end and in my opinion long over due.
Look at the S&P. Very broad selloff, and many more decliners. Everything is losing ground now. Even defense contractors with good earnings. This is what a shift in risk/reward profile looks like, where most stocks have had a blazing run, and the risk for a shareholder is much greater that the stock will decline, and they will lose money by not selling, rather than the stock will rise, causing them to miss out on potential gains. Any bad news can no longer be tolerated, and even moderately good news will be dismissed.
defense contractors had crap earnings. northrop missed earnings and so did lockheed. locheed tried to color coat the future but both missed
I don't think it's the end of the world as we know it but I do think it's significant enough to STOP this Bull cold in it's tracks. I see a sideways market for awhile and we are at the top.
Here's the story. 2007 is a disaster for home sales. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070424/ap_on_bi_ge/home_sales This quote is huge: "He said that the median price for homes sold in 2007 would fall by 1 percent to 3 percent, which would be the first price decline for an entire year on the Realtors' records, which go back four decades."