Analytica

The Impending Mortgage Crisis: Part Two

Yeah, I listen to the market but is the market listening to the consumer?

I keep looking for even one Bull include a respectable evaluation of expected consumer behavior as part of a positive outlook assessment.

Five Ways To Ride Gold to $1500

Seems to me the author brings substantial credentials to the subject and far more substantive and documented than at least 90% of the prognosticators I have reald recently. Indeed, most of the commentators and bloggers provide zero support for their opinions--plus, minus or neutral.

Questions: Can you name for me better (substance and insight) Commentators on Gold? I'm looking for critical thinkers. Where are they?

Apple, Walmart: Growth Stocks on the Move

Another huge and mostly overlooked Apple positive: Retail Stores!
Stop in and FEEL the excitement.

Not convinced? Compare the atmospherics and cutomer support in an Apple store with any other retailer selling some or all competitive products. Be sure to compare the competencies of the retail sales staff re tech details and help for buyers to mitigate perceived risk.

I can't think of any manufacterer -in any industry-that has successfully integrated forward to retail in the last 5 decades. Now 200 locations and more to come including off-shore.

And then there is the huge boost Apple will continue to enjoy due to the buying power of the Euro vs Dollar. And now European Tourists are buying bargains at US Apple stores.

And of course Apple has saturation distribution of all other retail strategies.

Thoughts on 'The Lost Decade'

I agree with huangthomas, visual information is too easily and too often "adjusted" for emphasis. An honest graphic would show a single, unbroken 1929 to 2007 time span.

And there are several more egregious visual deceptions at work here.

1- The title is "Lost Decades" but none of the time spans are 10 years wide nor do they each span the same number of years. The time periods shown are 13, 16, and 8 years respectively yet the graphs are of equal width.

2- When the width of a year is held constant over the three graphs, 1999-2008 graphic would be only one-half the width of the 1966-1982 graphic. So what? Think about it. If you squeeze the 1999-2008 graph to its honest width, you would see another dimension of the story. You would see that the speed of surge and decline is much faster these days compared with times past.

Good News: Home Inventories Falling

The data may be skewed since (a) homeowners may be choosing not to list their house for sale due to market and financing difficulties (b) foreclosures in process and yet to be listed by banks.

Also, average national data is pretty meaningless given each large housing market is different in terms of the inventory overhang.

What Should Today's Median Housing Price Be?

Right on! This is consistent with Shiller's analysis. See

<www2.standardandpoors....;

and

<timeblog.com/curious_c...;

Housing prices are on the decline and will reach historical norms in the next 2 years.

Price declines make the government negotiated re-set freeze program moot. One of the requirements is that the property value cannot have dropped since the original mortgage was created.