Up 0.25. Down 0.25 Unchanged. Yeah, not exactly a riveting day on the ES, is it?
Anyway, here are three interesting ETFs for the one or two bears left who think that homebuilders may be ready to take a U-Turn.
Trio of House-Related Shorts
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
DRN the Swamp
One ETF which shows the unwavering power of the recent up-move is the triple-bullish-on-real-estate symbol DRN, shown below. The “lower highs” remain intact, although it’s getting dangerously closely.
US Real Estate Sector Nosedive
Note from Tim: I realize today’s an all-green day, but I wanted to share this post from SB in any event, since the big picture hasn’t changed.
Further to my post of December 17, the percentage of S&P Real Estate stocks above their 200-day moving average has dropped below 50% to 37.5% (as of Friday’s close), as shown on the following graphic. At 50% on that date, it was the “last man standing,” apart from Utilities.
Home Sweet Home
I guess I should be pleased? You may recognize this as my ZIP code, particularly since it appears in the address for any and all Christmas gifts that are waiting to be shipped.
Palo Alto Puts
Here in my hometown of Palo Alto, the fervor about real estate is definitely gone. A couple of years ago, it was absolutely manic (see chart below, which you can see yourself in SlopeCharts with the symbol $PALO). Chinese buyers were paying all cash. Facebook and Google employees were trying to outbid each other on single family homes. And lucky ducks like me who bought in 1991 had to smirk at how the values kept lurching ever-higher. Not anymore.
The Bite of Bond Bears
My bearish-on-bonds disposition has remain unaltered all year, .and recent activity is pushing us toward what could be an important next step.
After the Fall
There’s something I’ve noticed on Slope that I find perplexing, a little troubling, and ever-so-slightly amusing. Whenever I write anything that seems to be a prediction, some people get their feathers quite ruffled. Indeed, it seems to kind of piss them off, and they pound their virtual fists on the virtual table and declare that no one can predict anything, and that it’s an arrogant waste of time to even attempt it.
I’m in the business of prediction. Principally, I use historical price charts to try my best to suggest what the future holds. That sort of thing doesn’t seem to bother folks. On the contrary, it’s kept Slope popular, to varying degrees, for nearly fourteen years.
However, when I make, shall we say, textual predictions, some people object. I guess all I can say to that group is………you might as well stop reading the post now, because I wanted to offer up a few speculations about what’s ahead. I am by no means a futurist or an expert in societal trends. By far my biggest “this is what’s coming” success was the 1983 book I wrote, which I’ve mentioned here before, called The World Connection, which predicted our online world with Nostradamus-like accuracy. (more…)