Residential construction in the US tumbled last month, according to the Census Bureau’s June report. Housing starts dropped a hefty 9.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate 836,000, the lowest since last August. The decline was substantially below expectations, and the red ink is compounded by the fact that newly issued building permits also retreated, retreating by 7.5% vs. May.
Daily Archives: July 17, 2013
Blinded By Correlations
Neil Irwin at The Washington Post’s Wonkblog has some fun at the expense of hedge funds. In a tongue-in-cheek announcement of a new hedge fund strategy that focuses on football betting in Vegas, he points out that the expected return “is not affected a whit by whether the stock market rose or fell that year. In the world of investing, a ‘non-correlating’ asset like my hedge fund is particularly desirable. You want things that zig when the rest of the markets zag, or at least where the zigs and zags happen randomly.”