The dollar is testing support by Angelo Airaghi [Guest Analyst] 11/26/2007

Global markets are awaiting for December’s rate decision in the United States and in Europe. Rates should remain unchanged, although the economy might contract across the Atlantic. Housing, in the mean time, might be reaching crucial decline levels.

Surprisely, housing starts increased 3% to an annualize rate of 1.229 million units (1.17 million expected) in October. It has been the first increase of the past four months and was equally distributed among all the U.S. regions with the Midwest showing a move of 21.1%. Multiple houses lead the way by moving up more than 40%, while single homes declined 7.3%. It is difficult to see a bottom, as permits declined 6.6% month over month (down 24.5% year over year) and inventories stays very high. In effect, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) survey index, which covers about 50% of all weekly residential retail mortgage, declined 3.6% in the week ending November 16th. The purchase index dropped 2.0% and the refinancing applications index fell 5.0%. Receiving a loan is becoming more complicated and investors are at the side-line expecting lower prices.


Angelo Airaghi is a Commodity Trading Advisor, registered with the National Futures Association and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. He has been an active professional since 1990 working for major international financial companies. In the past 10 years, Angelo Airaghi has been an analyst and commentator for national and international media.

This article contains the following sections:

U.S. housing: if history repeats itself

Awaiting the ECB decision

Euro/Usd testing resistance again

You need to be logged in to Forexnews to view the remainder of this article. Please login with your username and password at the top left corner of the site, or Request Free username and password to receive full access.