Last week was quite eventful. We saw Existing Home Sales in August come slightly lower than expected, they came in at an annualized pace of 5.50M. The big story, however, was the Home Inventory numbers at an all time high! New Home Sales were down 8.3% to an annualized level of 795,000, lowest level in 7 years.
The Case-Shiller home price index fell by 3.9%, and the 10-city metro index fell 4.5% on a year-over-year basis. This was the steepest drop in sixteen years according to this index.
Other items of note:
Rumors that Warren Buffet and a few Chinese banks were considering an "investment" in Bear Stearns......ummm, seems like a bail out to me.
GM and UAW strike came to an end. UAW will now be managing the trust fund that is supposed to take care of the 275,000 retired GM workers. Hopefully UAW will do a good enough job managing it so they don't come asking for a bailout down the road!
Consumer Confidence fell to 99.8, much lower than expected, the number was supposed to come in at 104.3.
Personal Spending was up .6%.
Earnings warnings from Target and Lowes.
Both Goldman Sachs and Alan Greenspan made comments to the effect that they are concerned about a looming recession, so needless to say that was a damper on market activity.
As we close out the third quarter, it is interesting to note how eventful it was as we saw the subprime mess implode and take Bear Stearns, Countrywide, hedge funds with it as well as wreaking general havoc abroad.
More to come on Sunday when I put out the Week Ahead post!!!
Always good information, Ana. Will be interesting to see where this leads down the road.
Jeff