2-19-25-QQQ

Short-term trends are bullish, as SPX and QQQ have finally broken out of their respective triangle consolidation patterns, which had been established roughly three months ago. Both SPX and QQQ made new all-time highs and all-time daily high closes as of Monday 2/18/25. Equal-weighted S&P 500, DJ Transportation Avg., DJIA, and Russell 2000 have not yet achieved the breakout seen in SPX and QQQ, and this will likely take some time.

2-19-25-SPY
2-19-25-ACN

Accenture PLC (ACN) looks strong as it is starting to break out. Also, Amazon (AMZN) looks like it has pulled back to an area that could be bought.

2-19-25-AMZN

Housing starts fell 9.8% in January to a lower-than-expected 1.366 million unit annual rate, reversing most of the jump in the previous month. The construction slump was largely due to severe winter weather across much of the country, including in the South region which accounted for more than half of all housing starts last year. Starts fell by double-digits in three of the four regions at the start of 2025, rising only in the West. 

Although the weather-related weakness should be temporary, the drop in builder confidence in February suggests that construction activity will likely remain subdued in the near term. Elevated mortgage rates, low housing affordability, and higher costs related to tariffs all weighed on builder sentiment, as discussed in yesterday’s Perspectives.

Building permits, a harbinger of future construction, eked out a 0.1% gain to a lower-than-expected 1.483 million unit annual rate, and were mixed by region.

Both housing starts and permits are off only slightly from a year ago, following deeper declines over the course of 2024. Longer-term trends, however, remain to the downside. On a 12-month average basis, housing starts and permits peaked in 2022 and are now at or near the lows of this cycle. This suggests a continuation of the housing shortage that has been characteristic of the U.S. market since well before the pandemic.