Jim Sinclair’s Commentary

Dr. Feel-Good, the Dow, has many of the recently bullish on gold establishments convinced that the statistical economy is on the mend. 12,000 is like an opiate as each time it comes into the equation glee spreads over the airwaves. The interviewers on financial TV are looking for good times just around the corner. The sellers are the recent converts that really never approved of gold.

Jim,

First important support is 1312.

CIGA Stefaan
http://www.goldmodel.blogspot.com ^[1]

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New Home Sales And Real Estate Slump
CIGA Eric

New home sales are notoriously volatile due to seasonality factors. Seasonality adjustments can cause unexpected strength in one month, only to be followed by unexpected weakness in the next. While new home sales unexpectedly surge, loan demand and various permutation of real estate credit generation ^[4] fail to support it.

Total Bank Credit Table for All US Commercial Bank:
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Follow the trends (money), not headlines influenced by statistical quirks. If the following trends can be interpreted into headline strength, I’d hate to see weakness.

New home sales, despite the unexpected monthly strength, continue contract year-over-year.

New Home Sales And Change YOY, SA:
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There’s a lot of home supply to work through over the next few decades.

Months Supply And Change YOY:
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Real median home prices continue to be confined within the sharp downtrend of 2005.

Median Home Price to Gold Ratio (MHPGOLDR) And YOY Change:
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Headline: US new home sales at 8-month high, loan demand down

* New-home sales jump 17.5 pct in December
* Median home price highest since April 2008
* Home loans index slumps to lowest since mid-October (Updates with Fed statement)

Sales of U.S. new homes raced to their highest level in eight months in December, but gains were driven by a surge in the West that economists were reluctant to call a sign of the market’s recovery.

Single-family home sales jumped 17.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted 329,000-unit annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. Economists had expected an increase to only a 300,000-unit pace.

Even with last month’s gain, new-home sales are down 75 percent from their peak of 1.283 million-unit pace in 2005.

December’s new-home sales were boosted by a 71.9 percent surge in the West that confounded economists, who viewed the strength as fleeting.

And in a sign that the housing recovery was still a long way off, an industry group on Wednesday reported an 8.7 percent drop in applications for new home loans last week.

Source: reuters.com ^[9]

More… ^[10]