Asian benchmarks followed the big advance on Wall Street Tuesday after a jump in U.S. consumer confidence boosted confidence and reassured investors that the turnaround is imminent.  Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average rose 1.4% to 9,438.77 while Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 5.3%, to 17,885.27.

On Tuesday, U.S. stocks shot higher for the first time in five sessions as the Conference Board's consumer confidence index rose sharply in May, refueling hopes that the consumers are getting more optimistic about the economy.  The surprise rise in consumer confidence, which vaulted to 54.9 from 40.8 in April, offset dismal housing news and put investors back on buying track.  Traders, back after a long weekend, bought enthusiastically pushing every industry group on the S&P 500 stock index higher.  Nevertheless, declining home prices served a reminder that the economic outlook is yet to show signs of stabilization.  The consumer confidence index jumped

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Highlights include D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY), Masco Corp. (MAS) and Whirlpool Corp. (WHR).Housing starts and permits is one area where "bad news" is really good news. Falling starts and permits will allow the huge inventory overhang of houses to be worked off.This is not without a cost, however -- it means that the Residential Investment part of GDP is off to a very weak start for the second quarter, and this despite it already being the smallest share of GDP on record in the first quarter.In April, building permits fell to a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of 494,000, down 3.3% from March and 50.2% below April 2008 levels. This suggests that housing starts will be weak again in May. Most of the decline in permits came from multi-unit structures, aka Apartments and Condos, which plunged 21.6% ...

Highlights include D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), Whirlpool Corp. (WHR) and Fortune Brands, Inc. (FO).A recent academic paper by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, both of the University of Chicago and the NBER, took a very close look at the effect of mortgage equity withdrawal on the overall economy during the housing bubble. "Mortgage equity withdrawal" is the more technical name for the housing ATM.It was very actively pushed by the banks during the housing bubble, with ads showing money hidden in people's houses that they were not taking advantage of. I knew it was significant, but this paper indicates that it was even more important than I thought it was. Here is an abstract from the paper:"Using individual-level data on homeowner debt and defaults from 1997 to 2008, we show that borrowing against the increase in home equity by ...

A solid report on pending home sales sparked a rally for homebuilders on Monday, but only D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI) can boast being a top-performing Zacks #1 Rank stock. Shares of the company, which is scheduled to report its fiscal second quarter results this week, are up more than 8% so far today.

< ?DART(15);?> According to the National Association of Realtors, pending home sales in March advanced 3.2%, topping expectations for a flat month. The result was also higher than the year-ago performance. Also on Monday, the Commerce Department announced that construction spending increased 0.3%, which was also better than expected.

The data initiated an upward trend not only for homebuilders, but for the market in general, as the Dow jumped by triple digits.

Even before today's news, though, DHI had been enjoying rising earnings estimates. The fiscal year ending in September is

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Highlights include Lennar Corp. (LEN), D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY), Masco Corp. (MAS) and Fortune Brands, Inc. (FO). New home sales fell just 0.6% in March from an upwardly revised February sales pace. However, at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 356,000, it was still the worst March since records of new home sales started in 1962. Nationwide, on a year-over-year basis, new home sales are down 30.6% -- and remember the slide in new home sales did not start a year ago. From the peak in mid-2005, new home sales are down almost 75% (see graph below; larger version available at: http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/). Regionally the results were very mixed (the regional numbers have extremely large standard errors, so take all of them with a grain of salt). In the Northeast, sales plunged 32.1% for the month, and were

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Highlights include D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI) and Lennar Corp. (LEN).OK, one month does not make a trend, and we have lots and lots of ground to make up.  But combine the news on New Home Sales (NHS) with the report earlier this week on existing home sales and today's durable goods report, and we just might have some good news for the economy.Remember the mantra -- at this point, more new housing starts bad, more new home sales good.Well, in February, NHS were up 4.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 337,000 from January's rate of 322,000. The January number was revised up a significant 4.2% from the initial read of 309,000.Still, nationwide, NHS are down 41.1% from a year ago, and just a tiny fraction of the 1.4 million annual rate at the peak of the insanity ...

The economy is in awful shape right now, but it is not in a terminal decline from which it will never recover. We have faced hard times before and always managed to come out stronger on the other side. While I do believe in happy endings, I do not look for one right around the corner.

Waiting for the recovery does not mean sitting on your hands and doing nothing. There are things that you can be doing today to help yourself prosper for the long run. Indeed, now may be the best time in your life to make moves that will help you have greater wealth later in life.

The stock market almost always turns up before the economy does. Trying to pick the absolute bottom is a fool's game. We are far enough along in the process that it is time to start tiptoeing back

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - March 19, 2009 - Zacks.com releases the latest Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks featured in this week's analysis include Centex Corporation (CTX), Intel Corporation (INTC), Stericycle Inc. (SRCL), Tesoro Corporation (TSO) and U.S. Steel Corporation (X).

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

This week: Q1 Earnings: Winners and Losers

First-quarter profits are going to stink. The consensus projections call for S&P 500 (SPX) profits of $16.33, which equates to a decrease of approximately 14% from a year prior.

On a company-specific basis, the numbers could be worse. Median earnings are likely to decline 19.3%. More than 10% of S&P 500 members are expected to report triple-digit drops in profits (57 companies with declines of 100% or more). Conversely,

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Highlighted stocks include Centex Corporation (...

Highlights include D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), The Ryland Group, Inc. (RYL), Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) and Comerica Inc. (CMA).At last month's sales pace, it would take 13.3 months to sell all the new homes currently in inventory. This is by far an all-time record. So what happens? New housing starts jumped in February 22.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 583,000 from the 477,000 pace of January.While this is still down significantly (-47.3%) from the year-ago pace of 1,107,000 it is nothing short of economic insanity. The last thing the housing market needs right now is new supply. These numbers will help the look of the first quarter GDP, since the residential investment component will be much larger than anyone expected. However, this is, quite frankly, an unmitigated disaster in terms of the ...