MaxedOutMama
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Specuvesting
Oil closing prices today:
The Housing Bubble Blog has a great roundup of posts today. Are these snippets a possible preview for the oil market?
Light, sweet crude for October delivery fell $1.10 to settle at $67.50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange - the lowest closing price for front-month futures since April 7.Do those emphasized phrases ring any bells? Hmmm....
Brent crude for October delivery dropped $1.16 to settle at $66.93 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.
Oil broker Tom Bentz of BNP Paribas Commodity Futures said the recent downward momentum in oil prices is driving speculators out of the market. ‘‘This is a much-needed correction in prices,” said Bentz.
The Housing Bubble Blog has a great roundup of posts today. Are these snippets a possible preview for the oil market?
Texas: “Nearly 850 Bexar County residents lost their homes to foreclosure Tuesday, the third-highest monthly total in more than a decade. The slew of foreclosures is reminiscent of the late 1980s when oil busted and the San Antonio real estate market crashed.”An article on the Beige Book release. Prices for lumber and plywood have begun to fall, which is attributed to the drop in residential construction. Sales of housing goods and automobiles are dropping, which is attributed to the "uniform weakness" in the home sales market.
Utah:“‘Absolutely, the market has turned down here,’ said Allan Carter, director of developer services for Southern Utah Title Co. ‘There are whole subdivisions filled with spec homes that in one case don’t have a single home sold.’”
“Carter blames southern Utah’s wild housing ride on real estate investors, who bought up hundreds of properties with the intention of flipping them. Last summer, roughly 40 percent of people purchasing properties in the St. George market were investors, Carter said.”
Colorado: “Buyers who bought within the past three years without putting any money down, a common practice, can’t sell for what they owe. Foreclosures follow, putting further downward pressure on prices.”
California: A home that might have sold for $315,000 last year in on the market for $250,000 today with no offers,’ says realtor Brad Maaske. ‘We’ve got nine and a half months of inventory’ in existing homes in Visalia, he says.
