Wednesday, December 23, 2009

12/23/09 Midday Report: Consumer confidence rises enough to spur consumers to still not buy new houses

Another day and more mixed data so Bulls and Bears can both rejoice (Yay!!!  Things are getting better and Yay!! Things are staying crappy.  See we can all get along, you hear that Israel and Palestine and Tiger and Elin?).  US consumer confidence rose to 72.5 according to the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, though it was down from the preliminary reading of 73.4 just over a week ago.  It's good to see even Michigan is adopting the Commerce's departments' "downward revision" strategy which Money McBags outlined for you yesterday.  In addition to Consumer Sentiment rising to some undefined number, personal spending and incomes were up (though less than forecast) as the second derivative of unemployment has slowed and the economy has been stimulated from flaccid to almost semi-erect with all of the dollars the government has printed and strategically placed into their g-string.

But Bears don't worry because in contrast to the stronger consumer (though not as strong as estimates, Magnus ver Magnusson, or the odor from a Mickey Rourke corn shit), new home sales fell to a seven month low and dropped 11%.  I'm no Robert Shiller (for fucksake I'm not even Karl Case) but when home foreclosures are at a record, why the fuck would anyone buy/build a new home when they can get an existing one for 70% of the price (and backing this sentiment up was the news from yesterday that existing home sales were up)?  But fear not everyone, because Timothy Geithner says there will be no "second wave" financial crisis and we all know how good Treasury Secretaries have been with their predictions.

In stock news, newspapers are moving up (and that is not an error as bizarre as it seems, so there will be no retraction necessary) as a Wells Fargo analyst upgraded the sector from "underweight" to "equalweight" after sniffing four packages of glue, downing a fifth of Jack Daniels, and revving up the flux capacitor in his DeLorean and travelling back to the 1980s, thus forgetting about this little thing called the interfuckingnet.  Along with that report, the analyst also predicted that New Coke will soar, Ishtar will revolutinize the movie industry, Teddy Ruxpin will be the best selling toy in history, and AIDS will be but a fleeting virus and thus he also downgraded CHD.

Tommorrow is a half day on the markets so get your trades in while you can and then enjoy your day off.

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