My often quoted colleague and friend Dan Alpert at Westwood Capital had a great take on the recently released Case Shiller Index that he shared with me.
Dan looked at the number of cities within the 20-city index in 2009 that had month over month positive or negative changes in price.
The lines form, well, a large fish. A lot has been made of the index “going positive” as a sign housing has bottomed. By June, nearly all cities in the index were showing positive price trends. Since then there has been a growing trend of more cities going negative.
Besides the chart showing a large bird-like beak next month, the fish is starting to spoil. As Dan summarizes: