The major equity indices are making a slow crawl to the upside during today’s session after yesterday’s massive selloff at the close. Global markets were mixed, for the most part, but were highly impacted by several large companies reporting earnings and making big announcements. Alibaba (BABA) shares tanked this morning after the most recent quarter failed to provide the kind of hyped-up revenues investors expected. Facebook (FB) shares, on the other hand, initially surged thanks to strength in mobile advertising. Don Thompson, CEO of McDonald’s (MCD), is set to retire on March 1^st after 25 years with the company; shares popped on the news. Weekly initial jobless claims came in at the lowest weekly level since April 2000, which gave the market some reprieve in the morning hours, but that news has already been digested.

The last housing reading of the week certainly didn’t negate the positive trend, but instead shows that the overall housing trend is stagnant. Indications for other housing data was positive all week, but today’s pending home sales report was rather disappointing, dropping by 3.7% in December. A decline for the month was not expected at all; in fact, economists expected sales to increase by 0.3% in the month. The weakness in pending sales was prevalent across all US regions, including the two largest regions: the South and the West. For the month of December, pending home sales declined by 2.6% in the South, 4.6% in the West, 7.5% in the Northeast, and 2.8% in the Midwest. We note that last week’s report for the final sales of existing homes in December popped nicely last week, but the trend remains flat. Today’s report on pending sales doesn’t point to long-term improvement, which is still quite strange provided how positive the job market is and how low mortgage rates remain.