Yesterday morning there were 75 stocks that reported earnings, and on average, these stocks declined 2.24%.  That’s an extremely negative number when considering the fact that the S&P 500 only declined 38 basis points on the day.  Below is a look at the average one-day performance of stocks reporting earnings by day this earnings season.  As shown, the two biggest days for earnings so far have been 10/20 (last Thursday) and 10/25 (yesterday), and on both of these days, the stocks that reported averaged declines.  Overall, the average one-day change for all stocks that have reported since earnings season began is now negative at -0.36%.  Before yesterday, that average stood at +0.20%, so yesterday we saw a major shift in investor sentiment.  It went from investors being willing to “buy the news” to instead selling the news.

Using our Interactive Earnings Report Database, we looked at all trading days since 2001 where more than 50 stocks reported earnings to see how yesterday’s extreme weakness stacks up.  We found that there have only been 30 prior trading days where the stocks that reported earnings that morning averaged a decline of more than 2% on the day.  And the large majority of those days also saw the broad market post a big decline as well.  On only 7 days since 2001 has the average stock reporting earnings that AM fallen more than 2% while the S&P 500 declined less than 1%.  Yesterday made it 8 days.  While it wasn’t a bad day for the market, it was a horrible day for the stocks that reported earnings.

The August data for S&P/Case-Shiller’s home price indices was released today, and it showed month-over-month growth of 0.42% for both the 10-city and 20-city composite indices.  Year-over-year versus last August, the 10-city was up 4.33% while the 20-city was up 5.13%.  As shown below, Phoenix, New York, Tampa, Dallas and Seattle grew the most month-over-month, while San Diego, Las Vegas, and Cleveland grew the least.  New York was up the second most month-over-month, but it’s up the least year-over-year at just 1.73%.  Is the monthly reading a sign that New York is finally set to see a pick-up in prices?

The chart below shows how much each of the cities tracked by Case-Shiller have seen prices rise since their late-2000s housing bust lows.  As shown, the national composite indices are all up roughly 40% from their lows at this point, but San Francisco has nearly doubled with an increase of 95%.  Detroit and Las Vegas have seen the second biggest gains at +70%, followed by Phoenix, Portland and Atlanta, which are all up just over 60%.  On the bottom end is New York with a gain of just 17% from its lows, and Cleveland with a gain of 20%.  Charlotte, DC, Boston and Chicago have all seen below-average gains as well.

The chart below compares current prices for each city to their peaks during the housing bubble in the mid-2000s.  As of now, the National US index is just a hair below its prior bubble highs, which is an amazing thing.  The 20-city composite is still 7% below its prior highs, while the 10-city is still 9% below.  Even still, seven of the twenty cities tracked have seen home prices rise above their prior housing bubble highs, and Denver and Dallas prices are more than 30% above their prior highs.

The main cities that still have a ways to go to get back to their prior highs are Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami and Tampa.  These are areas of the country that saw the most speculative prices during the housing bubble, and they also saw the biggest crashes when the bubble burst.

You can track trends in home prices for each city going back to 1989 using the charts below.  Cities shaded in green are ones where prices have eclipsed their prior bubble highs from back in 2005-2006.

In terms of new highs in yesterday’s trading, it was a pretty unremarkable day.  As shown in the table at right, just 14 stocks in the S&P 500 made new 52-week highs.  What is noteworthy about the list, though, is the stocks that did hit new highs.  Looking at the names, Tech is well represented.  More importantly, though, of the 14 stocks listed, three of them are among the five largest companies in the S&P 500.  As shown at the top of the list, Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Facebook (FB), which rank as the second, third, and fifth largest publicly traded US companies and represent more than $1.4 trillion market cap, all hit new 52-week highs.

Not only did these three stocks hit new 52-week highs yesterday, but they also traded to new all-time highs.  Below we show the charts of the five largest US companies, which includes the three stocks mentioned above as well as Apple (AAPL) and Amazon.com (AMZN).  While shares of AAPL (the largest US company) are still 13% off their all-time high of $134.54 back in April 2015, shares of AMZN (number four on the list) are currently just 1% from their all-time high of $847.21 earlier this month.  While overall market breadth hasn’t been bad, the largest stocks in the S&P 500 have definitely been doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

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