Lonely Homes; But Misery Loves Company

Housing bulls must be feeling awfully lonely these days, as the XHB and ITB sector ETFs have performed remarkably poorly over the last month. 

In fact, you might argue that the housing sector's abrupt (back in September) but now-persistent weakness is causing a good deal of consternation among the broad market, too. Either way, it behooves us to keep a close eye on the XHB daily chart, presented below, to see whether buyers have any type of appetite to step into a clearly downtrending sector.

That downtrend is now rather steep in the short-term but, again, buyers have yet to arrive in virtually any shape or for, just yet. And that is rather significant when you consider how integral housing is to the economy, representing the biggest of big-ticket item purchases for consumers. 

In addition, biotechs are notably weak this morning as the early rally fizzled out. The more this rally attempted weak bounces, the more likely it is we eventually see a flush lower as dip-buyers become demoralized with diminished returns, especially compared to what they have grown accustomed to in recent years.