Dow went up 25, decliners modestly ahead of advancers & NAZ & jumped 123 to another record. The MLP index inched higher in the 178s & the REIT index went up 1+ to the 468s. Junk bond funds were little moved & Treasuries rose in price. Oil was steady in the 68s & gold was off 4 to 1815.
AMJ (Alerian MLP index tracking fund)
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Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana yesterday as a Category 4 storm with winds of 150 miles per hour, one
of the strongest storms to hit the region since Hurricane Katrina, the
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration said. Ida has since been downgraded to a tropical storm & is expected to move farther inland over southeastern Louisiana &
into southwestern Mississippi later this morning, the National Hurricane
Center (NHC) added. Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 60 mph with higher gusts. Yesterday, Pres Biden approved a major disaster declaration for
Louisiana, unlocking federal funding for recovery efforts. The storm is expected to weaken rapidly over the next day or so &
the NHC said Ida is expected to become a tropical depression by this
evening. The NHC warned that a life-threatening storm surge is expected for Grand Isle,
Louisiana, to the Alabama/Florida border, including Lake Pontchartrain,
Lake Maurepas & Metropolitan New Orleans. The NHC said winds
will likely damage trees & trigger power outages as Ida continues to
move inland over southeastern Louisiana. Heavy rainfall is expected
thru today across southeast Louisiana, coastal Mississippi as well
as southwestern Alabama, & could trigger “considerable to
life-threatening flash and urban flooding.” More than 1M Louisiana utility customers are without power. Last night, New Orleans said the
entire city lost power after “catastrophic transmission damage.”
Ida now a tropical storm as more than 1 million Louisiana utility customers are left without power
US anti-missile defenses intercepted as many as 5 rockets fired at Kabul's airport today, a US official said, as the US rushed to complete its withdrawal from Afghanistan to the war. Afghan media said the attack was launched from the back of a vehicle. Several rockets struck different parts of the Afghan capital. Initial reports did not indicate any US casualties, the US official said. The attack followed a huge Islamic State suicide bombing outside the airport gates on Thurs that killed scores of Afghans & 13 US troops & another reported attempted bombing yesterday. The US & allied forces have evacuated about 114K people, including foreign nationals & Afghans deemed “at risk”, in an effort that began a day before Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug 15. The forces themselves are due to pull out by tomorrow agreed with the Islamist militants. Pres reconfirmed his order for commanders to do “whatever is necessary to protect our forces on the ground” after he was briefed on today's rocket fire, the White House said. He was told airport operations continued uninterrupted, it added.
Rockets target U.S. troops as Afghanistan withdrawal enters final stage
Signed contracts to purchase previously owned homes fell 1.8% in Jul from Jun, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sky-high home prices have caused affordability to drop dramatically in the last several months. The median price of an existing home was up 18% in Jul, according to the Realtors. Much of that was due to the fact that there was far more activity on the higher end of the market, which skewed that median higher. Pending sales are a forward-looking indicator of closed sales in 1-2 months. “The market may be starting to cool slightly, but at the moment there is not enough supply to match the demand from would-be buyers,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors. “That said, inventory is slowly increasing and home shoppers should begin to see more options in the coming months.” Mortgage rates fell sharply during the month of Jul, with the average on the popular 30-year fixed starting the month at 3.18% & ending at 2.84%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That drop gave buyers more purchasing power, which likely helped those on the edge of affording today's high home prices. The lower rates were not, however, enough to really juice the market. Pending sales were down 8.5% compared with Jul last year. That annual comparison, though, is an unusual one, because sales spiked so dramatically last summer after the initial shutdown due to the pandemic. Housing inventory at the end of Jul totaled 1.3M units, up 7.3% from Jun's supply & down 12.0% from one year ago (1.5M). There was a 2.6-month supply of unsold inventory at the Jul sales pace. Closed sales of existing homes in Jul, which represent contracts signed in May & Jun, rose for the 2nd straight month.
Homebuyers sign fewer contracts in July, as high prices chill the summer market
Dow Jones Industrials
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