DEL MAR, November 28 2011 -- Gooooooooooddd Monday morning San Diego!!! Lots on my mind after studying the markets this Monday morning over my Starbucks tall latte with whip and white-powder donut. The weather has rebounded, Lakers and Clippers fans are going to get to watch Kobe and Blake play this year after all, and my big news for ya’ll today is that I am now seriously contemplating starting a San Diego-centric economic cult; premise being that the global market place come Monday morning is determined each week by nothing more than whatever happens to the Chargers on Sunday. Philip Rivers as an early nominee for Savior, anyone? … Anyone? … Ooooooookay, maybe just as guru then? … How about as mascot? Anyone? …
Of course, in reality the plight of the Chargers has nothing to do with what is going on in the much grander plight, the leviathan that is the “global economy.” And unlike the current calamity that is the Chargers, we can find a few spots of fleeting sunshine. One such example is today’s revelation by the Commerce Department that sales rose 1.3% to a seasonally adjusted 307,000-unit annual rate. If you take anything away from that statement let it be that that gain was the highest in the past five months. So that is a good thing. The report goes on to say that the supply of new homes in the marketplace ought last almost 6.5 months, also a good sign, and a surprising one, to be frank. It remains a buyer’s market with home values down, and the national market still soft(though not as soft as it has been in recent months, quarters, and hell, years). The arrival of new homes on the National scene suggest that developers are making their move now as the worst of the long fall-out of equity-loss and plummeting home values is behind us, and that at some point, the only way to go is back up. One thing we can pretty confidently conclude, it just can’t really get much lower than this, can it? … Well, maybe a little, but if you’ve been on the sidelines and are looking to buy, now is the time to get yourself a little piece of San Diego, while the gettin’ is still good. These low prices will not be around forever, though ought be for the foreseeable very near future.
In mortgage rate news, Mortgage backed securities lost just a few basis points, moving rates sideways yet again. While there were some small positive strides in the report of the Initial Jobless Claims, and while Consumer Sentiment had a higher reading than in recent months, these are not the kinds of gains to hang our hats on in praising the rebirth of the American economy. Republicans in Congress continue to stall out a jobs bill until after the next election cycle, and as a National and local economy we continue to blunder along, hoping those blasted Europeans don’t tank our rates any further. (Here in SD, Cultists continue to await the arrival of Philip Rivers from on-high, descending upon the scene like Zeus, throwing Chargers’ logo lightning bolts in all directions, to the rescue at last… Or not…)
If you are a FoxNews viewer (and honestly, if you are, I hope that you are also getting some mainstream media as well), remember a few years back when Bill O’Reilly called for the American boycott of France and all things French? Perhaps he ought consider adding Greek food and Italian clothing to that list. Remember when the economy was our cross to bare, all our fault alone? Now the blame game is like a top spinning wildly over the globe, with a many-sided dice bouncing inside. When viewed in slow-motion acronyms like “EU” are now discernable on at least some of the sides of the dice, that we had previously long believed to have read “USA” alone on all sides. Where the top will stop and where the dice will land, and how it will all shake out, and when, is absolutely anyone’s guess…
Jay’s Outlook: dark and stormy
Jason P. Bernabei, TriCastle Realty
