The uncertainty in the US housing market still works as a wet blanket for the financial market. We have because of the increasing interests seeing the US housing market cooling down for the last 6 to 12 months but at this stage there is some uncertainty if the US consumers will, regardless of the housing market keep up the consuming in the near future, if not that will hit the slowing growth even more and gets its closer to an recession. Though no signs of recession are really visible today.
The mortgage level for the US housing sector is still manageable but when correction of the prices come this changes rapidly which is an concern for the Fed when adjusting the interest. Debt management have the last couple of months been giving some focus after that the US consumers in the last 3-4 years used there house as an wallet for consuming, this have been rapidly changing in the last couple of months.
The macro statistics have been weak overall but the job-growth is still good and no signs of recession can be seen there but that can change quickly because of the flexible US job market that can downsize rather quickly.
The level of company that invest is way to low to take over some of the weakening consuming, the fourth quarter was down 2,5% and January down 6%, but there is some signs that there is plans that the investment grade will move up in near future. There is important that companies sees business opportunities and use there historically great profits to invest to keep up the overall growth.
The overall market valuations still seems to be manageable and that will support the market in the coming weeks when uncertainty is out there keeping the pressure on.
Global Stockmarket
This part will consider regions as the US, Europe, the Nordic region, Eastern Europe, South America and Asia. A strong global growth have been moving almost all markets to good result for 2006 and below is quick overview of areas for the 2007.
No trend to make you go long, no trigger that are good enough to make you put money in the market and it seems that is the way most investors think at this stage, but that can change quickly if we gets some good statistics and some positive market news.
Copper is still strong and it seems that every bounce we get is an opportunity to buy.
Currency
News regarding currencies is that China is starting an investment unit that will have the responsibility increasing the return on the currency reserve that till this day on routine been put in US bonds. This will over time put even more pressure on the US dollar when huge amounts will be put elsewhere.
This entry was posted
on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Weekly Market Update.
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