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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:

>Res ipsa loquitor