June Consumer Confidence, Home Prices

Stocks this morning are lower after a brief gain at the market open. There are 2 main pieces of News this morning, from the economic front. Like I said, this week was going to be packed with news since it's the end of the month as well as the end of the 1st half of 2009.

Consumer Confidence in June Falls
After 2 months of gains in the consumer confidence data, we have seen a drop for the month of June. Consumers attitudes towards the current economic environment dropped to 49.3 from 54.8 in May. Not a huge drop, but still something to note. The overall point here is that the economy is still very weak, but not close to as weak as it was just 4-6 months ago.

Home Prices Dropping, But at Slower Pace
Even though home prices across the nation have dropped once again from March to April, the drop was very mild. Prices on a whole, in the 20 city S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index fell just 0.6% in that given month. On the other hand, the Year over year drop is quite staggering, yet expected, at 18% from April 2008 - April 2009. "While one month's data cannot determine if a turnaround has begun, it seems that some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions," said David Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. "We are entering the seasonally strong period in the housing market, so it will take some time to determine if a recovery is really here."

Overall, things were pretty much what most economist expected. We are recovering, but the recovery will not be over night, and will be slow, with a few potholes in the road. Remember, Tomorrow starts the 3rd quarter of 2009 already, and that's when many economist, as well as myself think the recession will be officially over.