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The XHB homebuilder ETF is decisively below three key moving averages after it knifed below its 50 dma last week. KB Homes reported a big earnings and revenue “beat” on Thursday after the market closed. The stock soared as much as 9% on Friday. Per the advice I gave my subscribers about shorting the inevitable price-spike in the stock, I shorted the stock Friday mid-day (July and August at-the-money puts). The stock is down 6% from its high Friday and is back below all of its key moving averages (21, 50, 200).
Several subscribers have emailed me today to report big gains on put options purchased Friday. When a stock sells off like this after “beating” Wall St estimates and raising guidance, it’s a very bearish signal. I’ve identified the best homebuilders to short and I provide guidance on timing and the use of put options.
Housing is dropping and it’s demand-driven, not supply-driven – All three housing market reports released two weeks ago showed industry deterioration. The homebuilder “sentiment” index for May, now known as the “housing market” index for some reason, showed its 4th decline since the index peaked in December. The index level of 68 in May was 10 points below Wall Street’s expectation. The index is a “soft data” report, measuring primarily homebuilder assessment of “foot traffic” (showings) and builder sentiment.
While the housing starts report for May showed an increase over April’s report, the permits number plunged. Arguably the housing starts report is among the least reliable of the housing reports because of the way in which a “start” is defined (put a shovel in the ground, that’s a “start”). On the other hand, permits filed might reflect builder outlook. To further complicate the analysis, the report can be “lumpy” depending on the distribution between multi-family starts/permits and single family home starts/permits.
A good friend of mine in North Carolina was looking at the Denver apartment rental market earlier this week and was shocked at the high level of vacancies. I would suggest this is similar in most larger cities. It also means that multi-family building construction will likely drop off precipitously over the next 12 months.
Existing home sales for May reported Wednesday showed the second straight month-to-month drop and the third straight month of year-over-year declines. The headline SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate) number – 5.43 million – missed Wall Street’s forecast for 5.5 million. April’s number was revised lower. Once again the NAR chief spin-meister blames the drop on low inventory. But this is outright nonsense. The month’s supply for May increased from April and, at 4.1 months, is above the average month’s supply for the trailing 12 months. It’s also above the average months supply number for all of 2017. If low inventory is holding back pent-up demand, then May sales should have soared, especially given that May is historically one of the best months seasonally for home sales. The not seasonally adjusted number for May was 3.4% below May 2017.
The primary reason for declining home sales, as I’ve postulated in several past issues, is the shrinking pool of buyers who can afford to support the monthly cost of home ownership. The Government lowered the bar for its taxpayer-backed mortgage programs every year since 2014. It lowered the down-payment requirement, broadened the definition of what constitutes a down-payment (as an example, seller concessions can be counted as part of a down-payment) thereby reducing even further the amount of cash required from a buyer’s bank account at closing, it cut mortgage insurance fees and it lowered income and credit score restrictions. After all this, the Government is running out of people into whom it can stuff 0-3% down payment, 50% DTI mortgages in order to keep the housing market propped up.
The analysis above is an excerpt from the June 24th Short Seller’s Journal. My subscribers and I are making a small fortune shorting homebuilders and homebuilder-related stocks. I will adding a couple other sectors in up-coming issues that are ready to shorted aggressively. You can learn more about this service by following this link: Short Seller’s Journal information.
You can read more from Dave Kranzler at his site Investment Research Dynamics, where this article first appeared.
Top Image credit: Pixabay.com
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The alleged housing bubble and the so-called mortgage meltdown we had was a completer fraud at the expense of the taxpayers who bailed out banks who alleged to have lost millions on loans they made to people who defaulted on said loans. Why? Because the banks never loaned a DIME of their real money to the so-called borrowers.
The very money the banks they allege to have loaned was created at the moment the so-called borrower(debtor) signed the banks Promissory Note, and at the moment of signing it, that Note became a negotiable instrument with face value of whatever numbers followed the dollar($) sign. The bank then deposited that value into an account as an asset, and at the same time as a liability,…the alleged loan.
Most people beleive a bank loans monies from what their depositors have put in the bank; the problem with that is that money deposited belongs to, is the property of, the depositor, and a bank would need a depositor’s permission to loan it to others.
Once one understands the simple way this all works one sees that during the big meltdown years ago, and all the bank bailouts that took place one sees how we, the taxpayers were robbed.
All the loans that were made to people who cold not repay them were brought up as the main problem. Well, if a bank loaned no money, had not one real dime involved in these loans the banks could care less if someone defaulted.
The bank writes the fake loan;
The house is the collateral;
The person buying the house defaults and the bank now owns a house for free since they loaned nothing
The banks now deducted from their income tax the financial loss of these bad loans(that didn’t exist)
The government comes in and bails out the banks the cost of the bad loans;
The banks turn around and resell the homes again;
The banks won 3 times;
the tax deduction;
federal bailout;
selling the houses, again with a fake loan.
Here’s something else no one ever thinks about or considers; many times a bank will sell the loan to a large investor, and they sell that loan at a discounted price of the face value of the loan. So, for example only, a $100,000.00 note is sold at a 10% discount to the investor for $90,000.00.
Banks will, many times, sell these alleged loans to a large investor; but the loan is sold for a DISCOUNT of face value of the loan. Now, IF a bank loaned one actual money (real money out of the vault), let’s say for example only, $100K, HOW can they afford to sell it for less than they loaned…??…they’d lose money. But with the fraud loan they don’t have a dime involved and they make a nice profit off the sale.
For those who care to read, one finds at the following site a book titled, “Top Secret Bankers Manual By Thomas Schauf”; the site is, https://archive.org/stream/TopSecretBankersManualByThomasSchauf/Top-Secret-Bankers-Manual-by-Thomas-Schauf-Copyright-2002_djvu.txt.
So I would submit that the next time another one of these so-called housing bubble bursts happens, as did the previous one, and all the banks crying out how much money they lost and want reimbursement from the federal coffers, We The People, the American taxpayers, will be raped and pillaged a second time, and the worst part of it is the Congress and bankers collude it in all.