“Markets make opinions,” once said someone who’s much, much smarter than we are.  Perhaps they meant that when markets rise for a long period investors will make up opinions about why they will keep rising further.  Likewise, if markets are falling they’ll come up with reasons why prices will continue to fall.

Of course, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion…regardless of if it’s any good.  One fellow may come up with technical indicators to support their opinion.  Another may follow the fundamentals.  Both, no doubt, are 100 percent correct until just the moment they are wrong.  That’s when they must come up with a new theory to opine.

Housing is one market that has hardly seen a ray of light over the last five years.  After decades of rising prices, culminating in a blowout of irrational exuberance between 2002 and 2006, the impossible happened.  Housing prices didn’t go up.  What’s more, not only did they not go up…they went down.

Since peaking out in 2007, housing prices nationwide have deflated 35 percent.  In some places, like Florida and Las Vegas, the carnage has been much worse.  But now, under everyone’s nose, the housing market bottom may have already come and gone without notice. Continue reading →