My Home About Me

Got in another "Crossfire"-style debate with Barry "Dow 6800" Ritholtz today on CNBC's "Kudlow & Company" (I'll post a YouTube video later). Barry shouted me down on my claim that real ex-housing GDP was consistently accelerating last year on a trailing 4-quarter basis -- "Just look at the GDP numbers, Don," the bully bellowed. OK, let's look. The lower of the two charts below makes my point. For the economy ex-housing, every quarter in 2006 was better than any quarter in 2005, and we went out at the highs. The upper of the two charts shows the same thing, but on a sequential quarter basis rather than trailing 4-quarters. The only real difference here is that the first quarter was an upside anomaly -- but the other three still look great.

Bottom line: Barry's oft-repeated bear case that the housing slowdown will spill over into the overall economy remains a pure speculation about which he's been wrong over and over. There's no evidence so far to support it, and plenty to refute it.

Amateur Investors   assets   bailout   bottom   capitulation   climactic   Commodity ETFs   credit crunch   Currency ETFs   day trading   Deron Wagner   DJIA chart   Dow 1929 Crash   economic data   Emini's Nas 100   emini's S&P 500   emini's S&P 500e   ETF buy setups   ETFs (exchange traded funds)   Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)