For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 19, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: D.R. Horton (DHI), Pulte (PHM), Owens Corning (OC), Masco (MAS) and EnCana Corporation (ECA).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Housing Starts, Permits Plunge

Housing prices are still under pressure, despite unprecedented steps by the Federal government and the Federal Reserve to prop up the price of that asset class. Artificial government support is not as durable a way to prop up prices as a better balance between supply and demand

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In October, Housing Starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 529,000, a 10.6% decline from September and down 30.7% from a year ago.  That puts housing starts at their lowest level since April, and takes a lot of steam out of the incipient economic recovery. Most of the damage, however, came in the very volatile apartment and condo area. Starts in buildings with five or more units dropped to their lowest level yet in this cycle at an annualized rate of just 48,000. That is down 33.3% from September and is off 78.1% from an already depressed level of a year ago. When most people think about housing starts, they think about single family starts.  There the news was bad, but not quite as bad as the news from "condo-land." Nationwide, single-family housing starts fell 6.8% from September and are down 10.9% from a year ago, ...

While there is ample evidence that the world economy is starting to pick up steam, one of the traditional engines for driving the U.S. economy out of recession is sputtering. Both Building Permits and Housing Starts for September came in well below expectations. Housing starts nationwide were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000, up 0.5% from the 587,000 annual rate in August and down 28.2% from a year ago. As is shown in the chart below (from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/) it is not as if housing starts were exactly robust a year ago. At their peak they were over 2.2 million. The number was also well below consensus expectations of a 610,000 annual rate. Making things worse, the August number was revised sharply lower from an initial read of 598,000. The one silver lining in the starts data is that the weakness was mostly in the ...

In August, total spending on construction rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $941.9 billion, a 0.8% increase from the July rate of 934.6 billion. Through the first eight months of the year, construction spending has totaled $629.5 billion, down 11.9% from the $714.3 billion spent in the first eight months of 2008. Construction spending is a major component of investment in the GDP accounts, both in terms of residential investment and in non-residential fixed investment in structures. Residential and non-residential construction spending are now headed in opposite directions. Residential construction rose by 4.7% in August to an annualized rate of $249.5 billion, while non-residential construction dropped a slight 0.1% to an annual rate of $372.6 billion. As the chart below (from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/) shows, it is unusual to see non-residential spending exceed residential construction. That said, residential spending got way out of hand ...

New home sales in August rose a less-than-expected 0.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 429,000. Sales had been expected to come in at 440,000. Sales were also 3.4% below the year-ago level of 444,000. The result was especially disappointing since this was probably the last month that one could buy a new home and still close on it in time to get the first-time homebuyer tax credit. Still, there was some good news in the report. Inventories fell 3.7% to 261,000 and are down 36.5% from a year ago. On a months-of-supply basis, that gets us back down to 7.3 months, from 7.6 months in July and 11.1 months a year ago. The months-supply metric peaked out in January at 12.4 months. Over the long haul, six months is about normal, although during the housing bubble we were frequently below four months. Thus relative to sales, ...

In August, the seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of existing home sales was 5.10 million, a decline of 2.7% from the 5.24 million pace in July, and well below the 5.35 million pace expected by the consensus of economists. However, it was a 3.4% improvement from the 4.93 million pace of a year ago. The month-over-month decline came despite mortgage rates being slightly lower in August (5.19%) than in July (5.22%). Rates are well below the 6.48% of a year ago. The median price, which is not the best measure of home prices since it can be affected by mix shifts, fell 12.5% from a year ago to $177,700. Existing home sales do follow a distinct seasonal pattern (as can be seen in the graph from http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/ below), so seasonal adjustment is needed. Traditionally, August is one of the most important months of the year for ...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – September 17, 2009 – Zacks.com releases the latest Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks featured in this week’s analysis include D.R. Horton (DHI), KB Home (KBH), Pulte Homes (PHM), Allstate (ALL), Hartford Financial Services (HIG), Travelers (TRV), Loews (L), Humana (HUM), Stericycle (SRCL), C.R. Baird (BCR), Celgene (CELG), Gilead Sciences (GILD), Anadarko Petroleum (APC), EOG Resources (EOG), AK Steel (AKS), Nucor (NUE), U.S. Steel (X), Fifth Third (FITB), Regions Financial (RF), Suntrust Banks (STI) and Zions Bancorp (ZION).

Zacks Industry Rank Analysis is written by Charles Rotblut, CFA, Senior Market Analyst for Zacks.com.

This week: Third-Quarter Earnings Forecast

Though the economy has stabilized, third-quarter results for the majority of companies will still be below year prior levels.

Per share profits for the S&P

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Though the economy has stabilized, third-quarter results for the majority of companies will still be below year prior levels.

Per share profits for the S&P 500 are projected to fall 15.4%. The median company is forecast to report a 14% drop in per share earnings. (The difference being that the S&P 500 forecast is a weighted projection.) More than 340 companies may have experienced a year-over-year drop in profits.

On a revenue basis, things are not much better. Median company sales are forecast to have dropped 7.2%.* More than 360 companies are expected to report a year-over-year drop in earnings.

It's important to realize that during July and August 2008, the economy was in fairly good shape. Lehman did not collapse until September 2008. Furthermore, the credit crunch's grip severely tightened over the 2-month span of September and October 2008. As a result, many companies are now facing tough

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – August 27, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: D.R. Horton (DHI), Ryland (RYL), Weyerhaeuser (WY), Louisiana Pacific (LPX) and Black & Decker (BDK).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

New Home Sales: Very Good News

We are now almost down to a normal months supply, which is around six months, although during the boom years it was consistently around four months. Homebuilders like D.R. Horton (DHI) and Ryland (RYL) will be able to pick up

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Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenter! More good news on the housing front: new home sales jumped 9.6% in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000. In addition, June sales were revised up from 384,000 to 395,000. The jump in sales brought down inventories to 271,000 from 280,000 in June. This brought the months supply metric down to 7.5 months, a full month less than in June, and well below the 10.1 months of a year ago, when inventories stood at 419,000. That is a 35.4% year-over-year drop, far exceeding the 13.4% decline in sales from a year ago. We are now almost down to a normal months supply, which is around six months, although during the boom years it was consistently around four months. Homebuilders like D.R. Horton (DHI) and Ryland (RYL) will be able to pick up the pace of housing ...