Is housing hitting a bottom?

There's been a lot of talk in recent days that the housing bust may finally be about over. While no one is projecting a robust recovery in the housing market, there is hope that the worst of the slide may be behind us.

June new home sales rose 11% in May to 384,000 from 346,000, the largest monthly jump in 8 years. However, it was still well below last year's 488,000 sales.

New housing sales appear to be turning a corner. This is the good news. The bad news is that June's number was the lowest monthly sales total since 1982.

Of course, this upturn is taking place during the time of the year, the summer, when most home buyers are looking to buy (although the numbers are adjusted for seasonality.) The $8,000 first-time buyer tax credit also seems to be boosting sales.

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U.S. stocks fell today, Friday, on worry over the quality of corporate profits after General Electric Co. missed quarterly estimates, discouraging investors after a four-day run-up in Wall Street.

GE’s profit fell by almost half as the slump that has gripped its finance and media businesses took hold of its heavy industrial units, and shares of the conglomerate tumbled 6 percent to $11.66.

Shares of Google fell nearly 3 percent to $430 after news that the weak economy and a slump in advertising spending took a toll on revenue growth at the Internet giant. Its results, posted late on Thursday, beat Wall Street expectations, however.

With companies such as Intel Corp and Goldman Sachs Group posting strong quarterly results earlier in the week, investors had been eager to see some consistency from other bellwether names.

Bank of America posted lower earnings and Citibank relied on a gain off its Smith Barney deal with Morgan Stanley to turn a profit.

“So far earnings

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The week started off on a strong note as the major indexes were all up significantly, as the Dow closed up 2.85%.  The NASDAQ and the S&P also had strong days, finishing up 3.11% and 3.04% respectively.  Gold and oil headed in different directions today, as oil was up settling at $59.03, while oil declined to $921.70.  The 10-year treasury saw prices rise finishing with a yield of 3.237%. 

State Street Corp. [STT: 41.79, +3.28 (+8.52%)] announced today that it has already started selling $1.5 billion worth of common stock and in an additional offering it will sell senior notes, not backed by the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program.  Both of these actions were taken as the company plans to use the proceeds to buy back preferred stock and warrants from the Treasury Department.  The buyback has not been approved by the government, but many feel that given the fact that

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The Dow Jones Industrial rallied late, moving up 0.60% on the day, making it the only major index up for the day.  The NASDAQ was down -0.88% closing at 1715.92, with the S&P also down, falling -0.10% to close at 908.35.  In futures news, both gold and crude oil were up settling at $923.90 and $58.85, respectively.  The 10-year price rallied today as the Fed purchased bonds, the yield fell to 3.176%.

In automotive news, six General Motor [GM: 1.15, -0.29 (-20.14%)] executives took advantage of the trading window and sold 205,000 shares of GM stock.  The Securities and Exchange Commission reported that the executives sold off their entire holdings of the company for a reported $315,000.  These top executives took advantage of the selling window as their stocks value would have been severely handicapped if they had waited for the next window, either by having their value diluted from a debt-for-equity swap or be

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Most Asian markets closed higher Wednesday amid media reports Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), one of the 19 financial firms undergoing stress tests, would need $35 billion in fresh capital to offset the impact of credit losses.  Uncertainty over the test results, to be made public Thursday, kept investors on the sidelines early in the day but markets rebounded as investors saw fresh buying opportunities.  The Shanghai Composite Index in Mainland China edged up 1% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 2.5% to close at 16,834.57. South Korea's Kospi edged 0.3% lower. 

U.S. markets felt the jitters yesterday as the anxiety over the pending stress test results somewhat offset Bernanke's optimistic view that the U.S. economy is on track for a recovery.  The Fed Chairman's testimony before the joint congressional economic committee, nevertheless, helped equity markets end the day relatively flat.  The S&P 500 declined 0.4% but managed to

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Monday:br /Economic Existing Homes (5.05M)br /Earnings Campbell’s (CPB), CBRL (CBRL), Atwood (ATW), Citi Trends (CITI), Donaldson (DCI), Hewlett Packard (HPQ)br /br /Tuesday:br /Economic GDP Chain Deflator (-0.6%, 4.2%), Consumer Confidence (39.5)br /Earnings American Eagle (AEO), Daktronics (DAKT), DR Horton (DHI), DSW (DSW), Vimpel (VIP), Blue Coat (BCSI), J. Crew (JCG), Dollar Tree (DLTR), Hormel (HRL)br /br /Wednesday:br /Economic Weekly Crude, Durable Orders (-2.5%), Weekly Claims, Inc Spend (0.1%, -0.7%), Chicago PMI (38.5), Michigan (58), New Home Sales (450K)br /Earnings Deere (DE), Tiffany (TIF), Teekay (TK)br /br /Thursday: Holidaybr /Economic Tryptophan Barometer (450M) br /Earnings NAbr /br /Friday:br /Economic NAbr /Earnings Frontline (FRO)div class="blogger-post-footer"http://stockweb.blogspot.com/atom.xml/div pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/u8WVg-bRhPuqu7vXrAuBnXALIlo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/u8WVg-bRhPuqu7vXrAuBnXALIlo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Stockweb?a=LC8JRrGc"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/Stockweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a /div

Goldman Sachs removed DR Horton Inc. from its Conviction Buy List.

D.R. Horton, Inc. operates as a homebuilding company in the United States.

Check out other removals at:

http://trackthepros.com/stocks/category/931

      

Tontine PartnersTontine Capital Partners - Holding AnalysisThis post is being written as part of HedgeFundBlogger.com's Investment Securities Tool which analyzes the holdings of hedge fund managers.If you're unfamiliar with Gendell and his Tontine Partners, then here's what you need to know. Founded 11 years ago, Tontine is a $10 billion fund ran by Jeffrey Gendell. He specializes in macro investing and takes very large, concentrated positions in companies he feels will benefit from those macro themes. Additionally, he will take on an activist role when necessary, to ensure shareholder returns. The fund has posted returns in excess of 100% in both 2003 and 2005.So, let's get right down to it... what was Jeffrey Gendell ...

Track Goldman’s Conviction Buy List picks at:

http://trackthepros.com/

1. Goldman Sachs removed Owens-Illinois from its Conviction Buy List. The firm maintains its Buy rating.

Owens-Illinois, Inc., through its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells glass containers primarily in Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and South America

2. Goldman Sachs adding DR Horton to its Conviction Buy lis

This market will drive a sane person batty at times, I have to tell you. Remember about 2-3 months ago, every day oil dropped people ran into technology stocks as a "safe haven"? We were shaking our head sadly and saying, how is this a safe haven... in time this will be proven to be a false assertion. But that did not stop the stocks from running up 5-10-15% each time oil dropped a few bucks as hedge funds had to find something to "play". Remember, as we always say, perception is reality. Until reality strikes. Lately we've seen poor earnings from Dell (DELL), we've seen bad news out of the semiconductor industry yesterday, Corning (GLW) is struggling, we've seen Qualcomm (QCOM) ...