We Interrupt This Rally To Bring You The Following Foreclosure Stats…

yes this is from Ferris Bueller

Is this thing on?  Check one two.

Hello everybody.  Quite the party we’re having here on Wall Street.  My friends will tell you that I’m the polar opposite of someone who wants to bring any party to a crashing halt.  Especially one as mind-blowing as this (did I see the dollar AND stocks up on Friday?  At the same time?  Waa-hoo!).

Anyway, I feel compelled to share a few data points from the ongoing real estate apocalypse, and in this post, I won’t even mention anything commercial real estate-related.  This one’s strictly about the ‘hood:

1. Every 13 seconds, there’s another new foreclosure filing somewhere in America.  Not a typo – every thirteen seconds.
2. There are now more than 6600 foreclosure filings a day.  Yep – sixty six hundred a day.
3. There have been roughly 2 million foreclosures so far during the crisis and an assistant secretary from Treasury, Michael Barr, said that another 6 million families could face foreclosure over the next three years.

These aren’t my numbers, they were released last week by the Center for Responsible Lending, a non-partisan.  So how did you, the sober and rigorous market participants I rub elbows with each day, take these latest little nuggets of tragedy?

You rallied the friggin’ luxury retailers, that’s what you did!

5 day chart of Coach, JW Nordstrom and Tiffanys

Listen up party people…yes, you there, the sell-side analyst with the lampshade on his head…and you, yes you, the investment advisor swinging from the chandelier…September retail sales were up .6%.

Yes, just .6% year-over-year versus last September (the crisis month) when Lehman and Merrill became memories in the market’s scrapbook and AIG imploded.  Anyone else extremely impressed?  Didn’t think so.

I don’t make market calls or buy and sell recs here on TRB, but I will say that I find it very difficult to be excited about a retail recovery with this type of foreclosure data continuing to haunt us.

You can tell me “it’s already in these stocks” and my response will be “fine, they’re all yours.”

Oh, one other thing: Whoever is the owner of the yellow Lamborghini, your lights are on.  And also, you’re a cheeseball.

OK, I’m done.  On with the party, kids!

Sources:

Foreclosures Mark Pace of US Housing Crisis (Reuters)

Retailers See Ray of Hope (LA Times)