Today, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the change in number of new homes sold in the U.S during June 2012: the number of new homes sales decreased compared with the number of new homes sold during May 2012.
According to the recent report, during June 2012 the annual rate of number of U.S new home sales reached 350,000 (seasonally adjusted); this figure is 8.4 percent below the revised annual rate in May 2012 of 382,000 sales, but it is 15.1% above the annual rate in June 2011.
The median sales price of new dwellings sold in June 2012 edged up to reach $234,600.
This news doesn’t coincide with the rise in the number of housing starts – a report that was published last week.
Currently this news doesn’t seem to affect the U.S stock markets despite the discouraging figures this report showed. It seems that the recent developments in Europe and the publications of financial reports of leading companies are crowding out the effect of this news. Currently, the U.S stock markets including Dow Jones, S&P500 and Nasdaq are rising.
Further, precious metals prices are rising after they had declined during recent weeks. There is a tendency of a negative relation (that should be taken with a grain of salt) between the changes in new home sales and bullion rates: as the number of homes sold decline, precious metals tend to rise.
Current gold price, short term futures (August 2012 delivery) is traded at $1,610.7 per t oz. a $29.9 increase or 1.89%, as of 18:46*.
Current silver price, short term futures (August 2012 delivery) is traded at $27.45 per t oz. a $0.639 increase or 2.38%, as of 18:46*.
(* GMT)
For more on this subject: