It seems as though investors are realizing a great rotation has been underway over the last year, as money continues to move out of the real estate and financial services sectors and into the health care and technology sectors. Due to the collapse of the mortgage and housing markets, financial services companies replete with CDO's & CMO's are writing down these assets with regularity. As a result, investors looking for returns are rotating their money into tech stocks with a fervor.
Commodities, which have enjoyed a boom along with real estate in recent years are still flying high, but oil prices seem to be getting ahead of themselves and may be headed for a bust. Even though oil has rocketed to $90.00 a barrel recently, the price of gasoline at the pump has barely budged since Labor Day. This leads me to believe there is a great deal of speculation in the oil futures markets and some of these high bidders may be left holding some very expensive contracts, especially if there is a milder than usual winter.
While the resurgence of technology has lifted the NASDAQ 100 by roughly 25% year to date, it is important to point out some research by Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners, which was featured in Alan Abelson's Up & Down Wall Street Article today. Kass reminds us that 50% of the gain in the NASDAQ 100 was provided by three stocks. These stocks were Apple, Research In Motion and Google. His point in the article was that this is a very narrow bull market in tech and may not be sustainable.
While money will undoubtedly continue to pour into technology over the next year, I feel it is extremely important to point out that much of the advance in technology has already happened. That is why I continue to advise my clients to be diversified in various sectors of the economy. If you have a diversified portfolio, you would already have investments in the tech sector and would have enjoyed the full gains to date and not be trying to play catch up.
Of course there are those who feel there is quite a bit of room for the technology sector to continue to boom going forward, as consumers continue to snap up computer game consoles, flat screen TV's, notebook computers, MP3 players, cell phones and digital HD recorders. Corporations are also trying to harness advances in technology, such as blogging, instant messaging and e-commerce and use them to improve communication and productivity. This will require continued IT spending into 2008.
Paul Wick, manager of the Seligman Communications and Information Fund, when commenting on technology returns topping the broad market's performance said, "This might be the start of a trend". It has been six years, but it seems as though the bitter memory of the dot com bust is finally fading. I just hope the lessons of chasing returns and diversification of assets are not forgotten.
John Kaighn
Jersey Benefits Advisors
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Housing Market Continues To Struggle
As we begin the fourth quarter of 2007, the housing market continues to cast a troubling shadow over the economic outlook. Even though builders have been giving huge discounts, sales of new homes in August fell to their lowest level in seven years. New home sales dropped 8.3% in August from July, and year over year from August 2006 to August 2007, new home sales dropped a staggering 45% from 11,000 sold in August 2006 to 6,000 sold in August 2007. To see how this is affecting builders, KB Home, a Los Angeles builder, reported a loss of $35.6 million for the quarter ending August 31, 2007 as compared to a $153.2 million net profit a year earlier. Jeffrey Mezger, KB’s president said “We see no signs that the housing market is stabilizing and believe it will be some time before a recovery begins”.
Another troubling sign with the housing market is the declining value of homes, which will be sure to affect consumer spending. Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price index, which measures home prices in 20 major cities, showed prices down 3.9% in July from a year ago, which was faster than June’s 3.4% drop. Just as sales of new homes were down in August, sales of existing homes were down 4.3% from July, and the time needed to sell houses on the market has increased to 10 months, which is the highest in 20 years.
Even though employment in the construction, real estate, mortgage and financial services industries is taking a hit due to the housing downturn, overall unemployment has actually shown a drop in claims. Despite an anticipated wave of layoffs expected in the mortgage sector alone, initial claims for unemployment fell 15,000 in the latest report by the Labor Department, the second weekly decline in a row and the lowest level since May. According to David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities, “The jobless report helps bolster forecasts that the housing slump may brake growth, but the economy will not degenerate into a full-fledged recession”.
The government also reported in the last week of September that the nation’s gross domestic product expanded by 3.8% in the April to June quarter, and this was a bit less than the estimated 4% economists had expected. With the difficulties the economy faced in August and September, many economists expect the GDP to have slowed to 2% in the third quarter. With growth slowing, hopefully the Fed has bought some time to alleviate the credit crunch with its half a point rate reduction, which may allow for an orderly decline in housing prices and sales, as opposed to a free fall. Even though housing prices are expected to continue to fall by some estimates through 2008, and possibly until 2010, an easing as opposed to a rout is always less troubling.
John Kaighn
Jersey Benefits Advisors
Plug In Profit
John Kaighn's Web Business Review
Another troubling sign with the housing market is the declining value of homes, which will be sure to affect consumer spending. Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price index, which measures home prices in 20 major cities, showed prices down 3.9% in July from a year ago, which was faster than June’s 3.4% drop. Just as sales of new homes were down in August, sales of existing homes were down 4.3% from July, and the time needed to sell houses on the market has increased to 10 months, which is the highest in 20 years.
Even though employment in the construction, real estate, mortgage and financial services industries is taking a hit due to the housing downturn, overall unemployment has actually shown a drop in claims. Despite an anticipated wave of layoffs expected in the mortgage sector alone, initial claims for unemployment fell 15,000 in the latest report by the Labor Department, the second weekly decline in a row and the lowest level since May. According to David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities, “The jobless report helps bolster forecasts that the housing slump may brake growth, but the economy will not degenerate into a full-fledged recession”.
The government also reported in the last week of September that the nation’s gross domestic product expanded by 3.8% in the April to June quarter, and this was a bit less than the estimated 4% economists had expected. With the difficulties the economy faced in August and September, many economists expect the GDP to have slowed to 2% in the third quarter. With growth slowing, hopefully the Fed has bought some time to alleviate the credit crunch with its half a point rate reduction, which may allow for an orderly decline in housing prices and sales, as opposed to a free fall. Even though housing prices are expected to continue to fall by some estimates through 2008, and possibly until 2010, an easing as opposed to a rout is always less troubling.
John Kaighn
Jersey Benefits Advisors
Plug In Profit
John Kaighn's Web Business Review
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