Tuesday: Homebuilder Confidence

Here is a big convention in Las Vegas, from the WSJ: Larger Home-Builders Show Reflects Industry Optimism

The National Association of Home Builders’ International Builders Show, combined with the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, is expected to attract 125,000 attendees and occupy 750,000 square feet of meeting and showroom space at the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center.

It is the largest edition of the trade show in many years, due partly to its consolidation with other shows and partly to the gradual recovery of the home-building market. It brings with it mildly upbeat outlooks for a return of momentum in the spring season, which unofficially begins after the Super Bowl and typically hits its stride in March.

For a chuckle, here are the NAR’s forecast for 2015:

The National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun estimates that new-home sales will increase by 41% to 624,000 this year from 2014 and that construction starts for single-family homes will rise by nearly 32% to 840,000.

No way!

Tuesday:
• At 10:00 AM ET, the January NAHB homebuilder survey. The consensus is for a reading of 58, up from 57 in December. Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of January 18, 2015

• Update: Predicting the Next Recession

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures: currently S&P futures are down 4 and DOW futures are down 45 (fair value).

Oil prices were down over the last week with WTI futures at $47.51 per barrel and Brent at $48.84 per barrel.  A year ago, WTI was at $93, and Brent was at $107 – so prices are down 49% and 55% year-over-year respectively.

Below is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are around $2.04 per gallon (down about $1.25 per gallon from a year ago).  If you click on “show crude oil prices”, the graph displays oil prices for WTI, not Brent; gasoline prices in most of the U.S. are impacted more by Brent prices.