
So much for the new home sales number from Friday translating over to a positive existing home sales number today. Some on wall street were hoping we would see a nice bounce in the existing home sales number today as well, but it was not be. Existing home sales 0.2% in July and inventories rose 5.1% to a record 4.59 million units. The median price of a home fell to $230,200, down 0.6% from the median price this time last year. This drop marked the 12th consecutive month that home prices have declined. ![]()
All of the major indices are currently trading lower on the news of the existing home sales drop. The Dow Jones Industrial Average trades lower by 34 points, while the Nasdaq is down 12, and the S&P 500 trades down by 9 points. The utilities sector is currently leading the way down, with the sector overall losing 1.68%. Duke Energy Corporation (NYSE:DUK) is currently down 3.29% and Exelon Corporation (NYSE:EXC) has fallen 3.75%. The technology sector has also been an underperformer thus far today. EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) currently trades down 1.4%, likely on profit taking from its nice move at the end of last week. Chinese stocks trading as ADR's are among the strongest stocks on the day so far. Chinese Life Insurance Company Limited (NYSE:LFC) is jumping over 11% today after it announced a blowout quarter on the earnings front. Other Chinese ADR's seem to be following LFC's lead today, with Baidu.com Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) up 4% and China Mobile Limited (NYSE:CHL) also up 4%.
The markets selloff thus far has been very routine today, and given last week's runup the action has not been that bad. The trading volume will likely continue to low, but as we pointed out yesterday in the weekly preview the economic data out this week is quite significant.







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