Below is a chart and brief excerpt from today's Early Look written by Macro analyst Christian Drake.
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Now, I could delve into why Existing Home Sales are likely to collapse next month, or why NHS were resilient in April while Housing Starts weren’t but why both are likely to accelerate meaningfully in May, but that detail would probably just serve to dilute the larger point. That is, investors will be forced to navigate conflicting data headlines reflecting different measurement periods over the coming month(s) while balancing the reality that, while the demand rebound has been encouraging, any further improvement will be increasingly constrained by the gravity of job loss, tight and tightening underwriting and severely tight inventory conditions. As we push towards 2H20 and with Housing equities (ITB) up +88% off the March lows and just -10% of the pre-outbreak cycle highs, a kind of near-term, purgatorial stasis is likely to characterize the collective psyche as housing investors weigh emergent (and already discounted) improvement against capped fundamental upside and a more careful consideration of the prospects for derivative and structural damage to the labor market and the consumption and housing economies by extension. |
