Bursting the Bubble

May 11th, 2006 by

reality

Some thoughts on what happens when the housing bubble bursts. From iTulip.com: The Modern Depression From the Orange County Register:Insider Q&A: Housing Bear Bruce Norris

And a thought-provoking paper from Bear Stearns (of all people), discussing what the next bubble might be when the Fed blows another one in the aftermath of the housing bubble. Bear Stearns.

Posted in Manias, Real Estate | No Comments »

Broad-based Decline

May 9th, 2006 by

reality

“Majestic Research analyst John Tomlinson, in his monthly report that tracks new-home sales in 40 major markets, found sales fell year over year in every market during February and March, with the average decline being 25%.

Washington, D.C., Los Angeles/Long Beach, Tucson, Ariz., Sacramento, San Francisco, and Phoenix saw the biggest declines with sales falling 22%, 50%, 50%, 46%, 30%, and 37%, respectively. However, even markets that hadn’t been weak previously - such as Philadelphia, Dallas, and Las Vegas - softened in the quarter, with sales falling 30%, 15%, and 13%, respectively, he said.

“Almost every single major market that we track is showing pretty significant year-over-year declines in sales,” Tomlinson said. “It’s much more broad-based” than it was prior to February.” Marketwatch

Posted in Real Estate, Truth and Trivia | No Comments »

The New Road To Serfdom

May 8th, 2006 by

reality

The New Road To Serfdom

Posted in Real Estate | 1 Comment »

Portfolio changes 5/8/6

May 8th, 2006 by

reality

Bought puts: SNDK, LRCX, XHB
Bought calls: EWJIO, SZPFO
Sold MF: RYVNX (partial)
Sold puts: NDYRO (partial)
Bought ETF: EWZ
Sold ETF: GLD (Partial)

SanDisk Corp (SNDK) - Designs, develops and markets flash storage card products used in a wide variety of consumer electronics. Products include flash cards, Universal Serial Bus, or USB, flash drives and digital audio players.

Lam Research Corporation (LRCX) - Design, manufacture, market, and service semiconductor processing equipment used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and are recognized as a major supplier of such equipment to the worldwide semiconductor industry.

streetTRACKS:SPDR Hmbldr (XHB)

StreetTracks Gold Trust exchange-traded fund (GLD)

iShares:MSCI Brazil (EWZ) - The Fund seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of publicly traded securities in the aggregate in the Brazilian market, as measured by the MSCI Brazil Index.

Posted in * Portfolio changes | No Comments »