* From Calculated Risk, looks like home sales have turned the corner, with inventory levels dropping back to levels seen at the turn of the century. Nothing is a straight line up, but this does seem to bode well even if it is to some extent predicated by low interest rates. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/10/new-home-sales-at-389000-saar-in.html
* From The Big Picture interesting “dumb” chart on development of internet http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/10/evolution-of-digital-advertising/#more-84711
* From Financial Times warnings regarding bond market, though also touches on fact equity market have seen 40BN withdrawn, ie that low yields in bonds have not resulted in moving investors into the stock market, as would be expected. Basically, forewarning of the stampede that will occur when central banks discontinue exceptionally low rates. Of course, this warning may be as much as a couple years early, but it is worth contemplating.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cb8a6b02-1cfa-11e2-abeb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ADdMstsB
* Oil continues its downward trend; gold and silver continue down off highs; dollar appears to be bottoming, Euro retreating vs dollar a bit in the past week or so but still trending upward. Corn/Soybeans/wheat have come down off highs in the last month and a half but appear to be moving back upwards though prices remain elevated. Info mainly from Ino.com
* Bondwise pricing on treasuries remains low with the exception of inflation adjusted bonds, which are still sporting negative yields. Info from Bloomberg
* Draghi says Euro has more to fear from deflation than inflation at this point. A bit confused but continued contraction of European economy likely due to austerity measures where bond repurchases to act as counterpoint.
Not sure exactly what this article means but it seems like the Fed may base policy on gdp number, which Bill Gross indicates is reflationary… so, continued weakness in dollar? Also, good housing numbers reflect economy continuing to grow, albeit slowly.
* Indexes continue downward trend of past week or so, which is expected going into the election. The general feel seems to be that the election is less important than the threat of the fiscal cliff. From a technical perspective, we may see a bump for a couple days here and then more down, the reality being we are at the edge of breaking a mid term upward trend at this point. The market has felt pretty droopy recently, and today seems no exception. The caveat here is that it is questionable whether we’ve really seen the full extent of equity rise due to the implementation of QE3, and it seems to me that we are probably getting to a point where oil prices will jag up and down a bit but not get much lower. ie Even with a slowing world economy, supply growth is, if we are to believe the experts, no longer in the cards.
* FT video w/ Shiller. http://video.ft.com/v/1920964467001/Shiller-sceptical-on-US-equities-and-housing
Shiller notes high equity prices relative to history though sees financials, industrials, healthcare, energy, and IT as low relative to history. Also notes that though housing sector has improved, see 1st bullet and calculated risk, that it is too much to expect we are “off to the races again.”
Good but don’t really get much clarity from the way these facts are presented. It’s like, ok but so what. The fiscal cliff is hanging pretty heavy right now and without a “grand bargain” of some sort the markets will be stuck in the doldrums right through the end of the year.