Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
March housing starts hit their highest level since December 2024 but permits fell sharply to a seven-month low.
Yesterday’s Fed meeting left interest rates unchanged but 2y Treasury yield jumped 10bps to 3.94%.
Here is the Illinois Congressional map that Ill Governor JB Pritzker approved. Almost looks like a psychedelic map of R Crumb.
It almost looks like artist R Crumb drew the Congressional map of Illinois.
More than half of major U.S. metropolitan areas posted year-over-year home price declines in February, with Denver (-2.2%) displacing Tampa (-2.1%) as the weakest market, according to data from the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index released Tuesday.
Los Angeles (-0.8%) and Washington, DC (-0.1%) also joined the list of markets with falling home values, signaling weakness that expanding out of the long-suffering Sunbelt region.
kkk
Mortgage employee headcount has fallen to lowest level since the housing bubble and mortgage crisis of 2005-2008.
US New Home Sales dipped 1.7% MoM in December (after a 15.5% MoM surge in November)…
…but ended the year at 745k – the highest SAAR since 2021…
“New” home sales have notably decoupled from “used” home sales in the last few years as homebuilders incentivize buyers (reducing margins) and lower prices (reducing revenues)…
Lower mortgage rates support modest further improvements in sales…
So much for the leftist fearmongers claiming that Trump Tariffs will kill US manufacturing, In January, US industrial production rose 0.7% MoM. And 2.28% YoY.
Capacity utililzation rose in January to 76.22%.
Pass the Save Act and don’t listen to leftist propaganda that women won’t be allowed to vote. Then get a passport and show that.
Higher housing prices and higher than normal mortgages produces rising average homeowner tenure.
And Americans aren’t moving.
The ratio of home prices to median household income is the highest since “The Big Short” home price collapse.
Call it the Post Powell Panic! After The Fed decided to do nothing at the FOMC meeting.
Gold is down -12% from the peak, trading below $5,000.
Silver is down -21%, trading below $100 for the first time since Friday, officially in a BEAR MARKET.
Rough night in the precious metals market space. An absolute BLOODBATH.
Is the top behind us?
Gold -6%
Silver -12%
Copper -4%
Platinum -13%
Palladium -11%
Trillions in market cap wiped out in a few hours.
Powell at The Fed FOMC meeting imitating former Fed Chair Janet Yellen. And Trump has nominated Kevin Warsh for Fed Chair who is expected to maintain Fed indepence.
Wipeout! $6 TRILLION ERASED IN 60 MINUTES
Gold wiped out nearly $3 trillion
Silver erased nearly $790 billion
S&P 500 lost nearly $780 billion
Nasdaq wiped out $750 billion
Crypto market erased $100 billion
Insane crash at US market open.
Gold suffered too.
Along with Bitcoin.
Keep on printing money. It seems that home price growth requires The Fed to keep printing money.
S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for November (“November” is a 3-month average of September, October and November closing prices). September closing prices include some contracts signed in July, so there is a significant lag to this data. Here is a graph of the month-over-month (MoM) change in the Case-Shiller National Index Seasonally Adjusted (SA).
From S&P S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index Reports Annual Gain In November 2025
From S&P S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index Reports Annual Gain In November 2025
The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index posted a 1.4% annual gain for November, in line with the previous month.
Real home values declined as consumer inflation (2.7%) outpaced the National Index gain (1.4%) by 1.3 percentage points.
Regional divergence persisted: Midwestern and Northeastern markets led by Chicago (+5.7%) and New York (+5.0%) posted gains, while Sun Belt cities including Tampa (–3.9%), Phoenix (–1.4%), Dallas (–1.4%), and Miami (–1.0%) saw declines.
…
“Regional patterns continue to illustrate a stark divergence. Chicago leads all cities for a second consecutive month with a 5.7% year-over-year price increase, followed by New York at 5.0% and Cleveland at 3.4%. These historically steady Midwestern and Northeastern markets have maintained respectable gains even as overall conditions cool. By contrast, Tampa home prices are 3.9% lower than a year ago – the steepest decline among the 20 cities, extending that market’s 13-month streak of annual drops. Other Sun Belt boomtowns remain under pressure as well: Phoenix (-1.4%), Dallas (-1.4%), and Miami (-1.0%) each continue to see year-over-year declines, a dramatic turnaround from their pandemic-era strength.
“Monthly price changes were mixed but leaned negative in November, underscoring persistent softness. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, 15 of the 20 major metro areas saw prices decline from October (versus 16 declines in the previous month). Only a handful of markets – including Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, New York, and Phoenix – eked out slight gains before seasonal adjustment. After accounting for typical seasonal slowing, the National Index inched up just 0.4% for the month, indicating that price momentum remains muted.
…
The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 1.4% annual gain for November. The 10-City Composite showed an annual increase of 2.0%, up from a 1.9% increase in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a year-over-year increase of 1.4%, up from a 1.3% increase in the previous month.
…
The pre-seasonally adjusted U.S. National Index saw a drop of 0.1% and the 20-City Composite Index fell 0.03%, while the 10-City Composite Index increased 0.1%.
After seasonal adjustment, the U.S. National Index reported a monthly increase of 0.4%, and both the 10-City Composite and 20-City Composite Indices posted month-over-month gains of 0.5%.
The littany of horror stories about government attempts to make housing more “affordabl;e” at enmdless.
New York mayor Zoran Mandami appointed Cea Weaver as New York City’s housing Tsar allegedly to make housing more affordable. Her proposal? People should pay 30% of their income for housing. if you have no income, you pay zero. Then she decreed that you must offer your multifamilty property to the city first before you sell it in the open market. Allegedly for the “greater good.” Which means a small number of elites will make a fortune (Mandami donors?).
But harken back to the Clinton Administration where they issue a proclamation to make housing more affordable, the national homeownership strategy. This strategy helped usher in an era of lowering credit standards and higher LTV lending. Leading to the mortgage crisis of 2008. Thanks a lot Bill and Hill!
And then we have The Federal Reserve, the master manipulators of interest rates. While mortgage rates have fallen recently to around 6%, they are up 134% from Biden’s Maladministration. So while The Fed contributed to the housing bubble that blew up and nearly destroyed the banking industry.
Government and especially Cea Weaver. A child of privelege.
Well, tariffs didn’t turn out to be a lethal weapon as Democrats predicted. The US economy continues to grow!
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2025 is 3.5 percent on December 16, down from 3.6 percent on December 11. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the contributions of consumer spending and inventory investment to third-quarter real GDP growth fell slightly to 1.84 and 0.09 percentage points, respectively.
All signs except real estate construction and imports point to continued economic growth.
But as long as The Federal Reserve continues to print money (M2), the economy will continue to grow. Keep on printing?
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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