For the past four years I’ve been singing the same tune… The U.S. economy cannot recover unless the U.S. housing market recovers. As a past “real estate man,” (in my life), I’ve never seen an economic recovery unaccompanied by a real estate market recovery. There was a lot of speculation going into 2011 that it would be a year for the U.S. housing market to find a bottom. Well, the U.S. housing market hit a “bottom” last year, but not one to ...

The U.S. stock market can go up with a lackluster Main Street economy because of better investor sentiment, earnings growth, and fair valuations. Stocks don’t need a lot of good economic news to tick higher; investor sentiment is strong enough and institutional investors want to be buyers. Any news showing economic growth is good enough for this market, and that’s a big change from last year. The S&P 500 Index is forming a new base with 1,300 as the floor so ...

January is over and it was quite impressive; not a record by any means, but nonetheless it gives us something to look forward to this year. The key stock indices easily outperformed the historical averages by a wide margin. Technology and small-cap stocks lead the market, with the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 up 7.98% and 6.89%, respectively, in January. The laggards were the blue-chips and large-cap stocks, with the DOW and S&P 500 up 3.56% and 4.41%, respectively. Even Chinese ...

Looking at homebuilder stocks, you would think the good times are back. Since the lows of last year, they’ve rallied hard in anticipation of a big rebound in sales to home buyers. The data don’t yet justify the rapid rise in homebuilder stocks, as the November data for the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home-price index shows that home prices have fallen for the third straight month in a row. Except for a move up in April 2011, home prices have had ...

If you think U.S. banks got by unscathed in 2011, think again… There were 92 U.S. bank failures in 2011. Total assets of those banks were just over $36.0 billion. (Wonder why we didn’t read much about this in the news.) Since the credit crisis began in late 2007 to the end of 2011, there were a total of 417 U.S. bank failures whose assets totaled about $680 billion (source: FDIC). The number of people that lost their jobs at these 417 ...

Another benchmark stock reported good corporate visibility for 2012 and it’s another small but positive sign of economic recovery, as well as the health of corporate America. United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE/UPS) reported 2011 fourth-quarter revenues that grew six percent to $14.2 billion. U.S. revenues grew seven percent to $8.7 billion during the quarter and adjusted earnings grew 21% to $1.28 per diluted share. The company reported that it expects “modest” revenue growth this year, but corporate earnings should improve ...

The most sought-after initial public offering (IPO) since the arrival of Google Inc. (NASDAQ/GOOG) in August 2004 is in the works, as social networking giant Facebook is expected to file for its IPO this week. With over 800 million users from around the world, including 80% located outside of the United States, Facebook will make investors who are lucky enough to get the stock at the pre-IPO price (yet to be determined) rich. The fact that over 350 million active ...

Well, if people haven’t been paying attention to the U.S. policy on the dollar, it’s no secret that the administration is hoping for a massive decline in the currency to help pump up exports. With the Federal Reserve announcement that they are keeping rates low until late 2014, we all know that this means cheap money will be flooding into commodities as the dollar sinks. What can you do? Several things are important to note. Yes, the first thing I’m sure ...