hot cider mulled wine
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Markets continued their epic bull run and closed at a new post-crisis high.
First the scoreboard:
Dow: 13,895, +70.6, +0.5 percent

S&P 500: 1,502, +8.1, +0.5 percent

NASDAQ: 3,149, +19.3, +0.6 percent

And now the top stories:
  • New home sales unexpectedly fell 7.3 percent to 369k in December.  Economists were looking for a reading of 385k.  However, it's worth noting that the November number was revised up to 398k.  So the report was somewhat mixed.

  • However, some economists are increasingly worried about a potential supply glut in the market for new homes. "The worry, though, is that with the pace of new residential building activity now approaching 1 million units, the impending surge in new homes supply could create a problem for this segment of the housing market, unless there is a commensurate increase in demand," wrote TD Securities' Millan Mulraine.

  • Business Insider's Henry Blodget recently spoke to economist Robert Shiller who was reluctant to confirm that housing would boom again.  "I think that we might have [hit bottom], but my biggest sense is that probably nothing dramatic happens either way," he said. "If the Pulsenomics survey is right, and it’s up between 1 and 2 percent real, that’s plausible to me. But also down 1 or 2 percent real, that’s plausible. I’m sorry I don’t have a more precise forecast."

  • Shiller also told Blodget that we can expect low returns in the stock market. "I think predicting something like 4 percent real for the stock market, as opposed to 7 or 8 percent historically," he said. "And that looks pretty good."