The past four days have been rather successful for the HW 30 index — HousingWire’s exclusive index of stocks impacting the housing economy. Since Friday, September 6, the stock index has experienced substantial improvement.
But why the vast increase in the index over the last four days? Brandon Dobell, head of global services at William Blair, said with such a wide variety of companies on the index, the movement is likely the result of changes across the entire index and has less to do with individual stocks.
People were probably overly skeptical of the housing market on the heels of the May and June tapering talk as well as some of the recent application data, said Dobell.
"Rates continue to go up, but I don’t think people are as nervous as rates go up," he added. At least not as nervous as they were earlier in the summer, he explained.
Dobell noted that consumers are still buying homes and the job market is picking up slightly. “Realogy (RLGY) , Zillow (Z), and Trulia (TRLA) — kind of the residential broker focused or marketing focused (stocks) — have all acted pretty well,” said Dobell.
"It’s a reflection of people’s recognition that the marketing model for residential housing continues to change,” Dobell said. "There’s a little less fear about interest rates relative to affordability or housing price velocity,” he added.
However, there was one stock on the HW 30 that didn’t perform so well on Tuesday: CoreLogic (CLGX).
On Tuesday morning, the company’s chief financial officer Frank Martell spoke at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference in New York.
The CFO was slated to give an update on the previously announced acquisition of Marshall & Swift/Boeckh, DataQuick Information Systems
and DataQuick Lender Solutions' flood services operations.
"We assumed and expected they would use this forum," said Dobell. However, much to the dismay of those in attendance, very little was mentioned about the acquisition. Instead, it was announced that the FTC requested a 30-day extension for the process and asked for more information, Dobell said.
According to Dobell, the data CoreLogic produced was certainly positive for the overall housing market during the forum, but what the company talked about in regards to its own part of the business seemed less enthusiastic, which may have shaken investors in the stock.
