You will pardon us if we don't "buy" the latest attempt by the Census Department [3]to telegraph housing euphoria with the just reported number of 481K new December home sales, a surge of 11.6% compared to November, an increase which was expected by the consensus to be only 2.7%. In fact, the 481K print is now the "highest" since June of 2008.
[4]
The reason for our disbelief? Because as we have been tracking for the past 6, and now 7 months, every single such euphoric print since May of 2014 has been revised substantially lower after the fact (and after the headline-scanning algos promptly gobbled up stocks on the initial "beat"), and sure enough, the November print of 438K, was also just "revised" downward to 431K.
Putting today's "highest in 7 years" new home sales print in context: consider that in May 2014 the same data series was originally reported at 504K... only to be revised to 458K!
In other words, there has now been 7 consecutive downward revision to the New Home Sales data!
[5]
As we said: forgive us, but we will once again refrain from drinking the Department of Truth's cool aid.
