Judy Weil

Homebuilders Agree: January Was A Good Month

Dear Equity Has No Clue,

I'm neither long the homebuilders, nor trying to push up or down those stocks. I don't own, have not owned, nor am I short any of them. I am simply pointing out that the homebuilders mentioned above all noted an upturn in sales in January. I don't have the slightest clue as to whether this means the housing slump is turning or is just pausing for air before the industry slips further in to the doldrums.

The homebuilder executives themselves weren't certain. Pulte's, as mentioned above, doesn't see any improvement on the horizon, while Ryland's and Horton's were more positive on the general trend.

I once read an article on Seeking Alpha written by a housing analyst who said he was watching the conference calls of homebuilders. He said the moment they displayed any sort of positive data or noted any positive trends, then that would be the first indication of a turn in the market for him. I, of course, don't have any idea if that is true, but for those that do subscribe to that theory, then here you have the first signs of a positive trend.

Many of the articles that I have read on housing point to further declines ahead, so I would say one month's sales would be pretty risky to use as a bottom indicator.

The point of this article, and conference call excerpts in general is to highlight how much information we can glean from the free conference call transcripts that Seeking Alpha offers.

Whether you buy in to homebuilder-executive-... or not, the fact that this trend can be gleaned by simply reading all of their transcripts, which are free and easily accessible and don't take too long to read, is probably the most important part of this entire article!

All the best,

Judy