Market commentary for May 31st

Well the Dow is up to +123 points on the Dow this morning within the first 15 minutes. You might be saying to yourself, "Wow, I wonder what great news came out this morning?" Well I don't know about good news, but the Case Shiller Housing 20 city Index number came in at -3.61, which was down from April's number of -3.41 for example. And the Chicago PMI came in at an incredibly low number of 56.6 for May. Expectations were for 63.0 and last month it came in at 67.6, so you can see how bad that is.

We are awaiting the Consumer Confidence number in a few minutes which I will update here, but the news this morning is anything but good and yet the market soars, as usual completely ignoring the facts with the remaining QE2 funds being applied to the continued manipulation of market data. This is so much worse than any odds favoring the house in Vegas. Will we ever learn this will have a bad ending? I doubt it until it actually happens! Shame on us.

Update: 7:00am PST

Consumer Confidence was down remarkably to 60.8, while last month the number came in at 65.4 and expectations for 67.5, so this too is just awful for the economy outlook as well as the above data.

Disappointing economic data today on Housing and Consumer Confidence.

This morning the Case-Shiller report came out on housing this morning and it was not good news. The 20-City Index for October came in at -0.8%. Expectations were of +0.1%. September data came in at +0.59%, but was revised today to +0.44%. Also today Consumer Confidence for December data was reported. Expectations were for 56.1 for the month but the number came in at a disappointing 52.5. The month of November came in at 54.3 so this was a big drop. Below is a chart from Tradingeconomics.com on Consumer Confidence over the past 2 years.

Case-Shiller Index shows an Improvement

The 20 City Case-Shiller Index showed an improvement in housing. The number came in at 4.61%. What was expected was 4.0%. This indicator is a 2 month lagging indicator but in this euphoric market it still moved the Futures up to Dow +66. Market is just opening now.