SkyIG

SKY News Summary 07-28-09

A few more companies (CBI, Conoco, Exxon, Praxair, Shell, and T. Rowe) will release earnings this week. If they show stronger earnings, their numbers could reinforce the good news from new home sales that came out on Monday and give a lift to the market despite the negativity of the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index released Tuesday. Durables orders for June will be released on Wednesday and the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release the advance number for GDP on Friday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced new rules and actions applying to short sales. First, Rule 204, requires broker-dealers to promptly purchase or borrow securities to deliver on a short sale. Second, the SEC will post short sale volume and transactions on the internet. Third, the Commission will hold a public roundtable on September 30 to discuss securities lending, pre-borrowing, and additional short sale disclosures. “The roundtable will consider, among other topics, the potential impact of a program requiring short sellers to pre-borrow their securities, possibly on a pilot basis, and adding a short sale indicator to the tapes to which transactions are reported for exchange-listed securities.”
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2009/2009-172.htm

New home sales rose 11 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000 units. “The big gain in home sales last month was reflected in three out of four regions and helped shrink the inventory of new homes for sale to its lowest level in years,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Even so, the pace of home sales in June 2009 was still more than 21 percent off the pace of sales in the same month last year, so we still have quite a way to go. The concern now is that complicating factors – particularly job losses, appraisal issues that are torpedoing more than a quarter of new-home sales, and the impending expiration of the first-time buyer tax credit – threaten to stifle the positive momentum.” New-home sales rose by 29.2 percent in the Northeast, 43.1 percent in the Midwest, and 22.6 percent in the West in June. However, sales dropped by 5.3 percent in the South, which is the country’s largest housing market.
http://www.nahb.org/news_details.aspx?sectionID=0&newsID=9511
http://www.census.gov/const/newressales.pdf

Retail sales rose 1.0 percent in the July 25 week. Year-over-year retail sales declined 0.5 percent vs. the prior week’s 0.3 percent drop. ICSC-Goldman said higher traffic offset low inventories and lack of clearance items.
http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/econodayframe.asp?
page=http://anasdaq.econoday.com/byweek.asp?cust=nasdaq

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index dropped 2.7 points to 46.6 in July due mainly to a weak outlook for the jobs market.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gNiyJ905Ho0Ur96V2TQhsBX19lGwD99NIJHO0

Sources: AP, Census Bureau, NASDAQ, NAHB, and SEC websites