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Markets continued to press pause this week after a nice run following the Fed decision a week ago to lower interest rates by 25 basis points (bps), with more cuts to come. Going back to last week, this sent major market indexes up to record highs. We started giving a little of this back starting yesterday and continuing into today.

The Dow slipped -171 points, +0.37% on the day, with the S&P 500 down -18 points and the Nasdaq -75, -0.73%. The small-cap Russell 2000 slid the farthest: -22 points, -0.92%. Market indexes are pretty flat over the past five trading days, but that was after setting record-high close after record-high close. Bond yields are steady on the 10-year side, +4.15%, while inching up on the 2-year: +3.61%.

KB Home, StitchFix Report Earnings After the Bell
 

Homebuilding major KB Home (KBH - Free Report) reports Q3 earnings after today’s closing bell, beating estimates solidly on the bottom line — $1.61 per share versus expectations of $1.50 — on revenues that barely outpaced forecasts: $1.62 billion versus $1.60 billion. The company also announced the repurchase of $188.5 million in stock.

Late-trading of KBH shares has been extremely volatile on the news, and currently reside down -0.50%. Revenues for the fiscal year have been lowered notably to $6.10-6.20 billion from the $6.4 billion anticipated in the Zacks consensus, which is likely the main culprit to the late-day underperformance. The Average Selling Price per home rose to $475,700.

StitchFix (SFIX - Free Report) put in markedly better results in its fiscal Q4 report this afternoon, posting a loss per share of -$0.07, better than the -$0.13 estimated and the -$0.12 per share reported in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $311.2 million were well past the $301.3 million analysts were looking for, down just -2.6% year over year. Shares are up +10% on the news, adding to the company’s +30.8% gains year to date.

New Home Sales Up +20% in August
 

Speaking of new homes, earlier this morning the New Home Sales report for August came out, surging past expectations to a clean +800K new seasonally adjusted, annualized homes having been sold, +20.5% year over year and well past the +649K estimate, which was upwardly revised to +665K. This +800K figure is the highest single-month tally since January of 2022.

The Northeast saw the biggest gains for the month, +72.2%, followed by the South at +24.7%, the Midwest at +12.7% and the West, which led all regions for July new home sales, rose just +5.6%. The median sales price also rose +7% month over month to $413,500. This data is prone to significant revisions over time, however, so we won’t declare the slump in housing dead just yet.

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