According to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index, home prices in the 20 cities surveyed saw an increase for the first time in seven months. The 0.8% gain was driven by the government tax credits, which have since expired.

Therein lies the problem: the gains were propelled by government incentives, and said incentives have gone by the wayside. Will we see the gains come back to the pack since the government has stopped spending to make us spend? You can bet on it.

The government announced Wednesday morning that home construction dropped to its lowest level since December and building permits dropped as well.

According to the Commerce Department, housing starts dropped 10% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000 in May. Compared to a year ago, housing starts increased 7.8%, but are more than 70% lower than the housing market's peak. A major reason for the drop was a 17% plunge in single-family home starts (which is often considered the best way to determine the health of the housing market), which had benefited earlier in the year thanks to $8,000 worth of federal tax credits. The 17% drop was the largest monthly drop since January 1991.

Almost lost among the in-line 1% December rise in pending homes sales, as compiled by the National Association of Realtors, was an observation by NAR Chief Economist Lawence Yun.

Yun said he expects existing home sales to rise to 5.6 million in 2010, up 8.5% from 5.16 million in 2009, aided by the the extended home buyer tax credit. Yun also sees 2.4 million households taking advantage of the home buyer credit in 2010.

The Commerce Department reported this morning that U.S. housing starts fell 4% in December, bringing the seasonally adjusted annual rate to 557,000. For all of 2009, roughly 554,000 homes were started, which is 39% lower than the total from a year earlier. Furthermore, this reading is the lowest since the end of World War II.

Starts of single-family homes fell 29% to a record low of 444,000 in 2009. The good news? This reading was a good deal better than the 540,000 rate expected by analysts and November's starts were revised higher.

Today was an options expiration date, and the stocks closed higher. We had strength early on from Europe, but then some very surprisingly good housing data caused added cheer. The data was taken as permanent, but much still points toward the bump up being temporary. Even a negative call for 222 more bank closures by Meredith Whitney failed to jolt the markets.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 9,502.33 +152.28 (1.63%)
S&P 500 1,025.68 +18.31 (1.82%)
Nasdaq 2,020.36 +31.14 (1.57%)

Equities stabilized today after two relatively large selling waves in equities. It even looks like we only had a 1% trading range in the DJIA from top to bottom today. The housing data might have helped marginally, but that was actually negative data if you dig down into the numbers.

The hope for a return to growth is starting to see a bit of what may be reality setting in now that even Mr. Obama expects double-digit unemployment to become a reality. It seems that the rise in oil actually helped to keep equities higher. Here are today's closing bell levels:

Dow 8,322.46 -16.55 (-0.20%)
S&P 500 894.99 +1.95 (0.22%)
Nasdaq 1,764.92 -1.27 (-0.07%)

Top upgrades and downgrades

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), sales of pre-owned homes increased 5.1% in February -- bringing the seasonally adjusted annual rate to 4.72 million units in February. The NAR attributed the growth to "deep price discounts." The percentage gain was the largest since July 2003, but sales are still down 4.6% during the past 52 weeks.

A survey by MarketWatch showed expectations for a decline to 4.45 million from January's 4.49 million rate. In the past year, the median sales price for homes fell 15.5% to $165,400 -- logging the second largest year-over-year price drop ever. The largest year-over-year price drop logged was January's drop of 17.5%. The inventory of unsold homes increased 5.2% to 3.80 million, which is a 9.7-month supply at February's sales pace. More often than not, inventories increase 5% in February -- but such data is not adjusted for seasonality.

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Most people attribute this phrase to 19th century British politician and writer Benjamin Disraeli (it was later popularized by our own Mark Twain). But more recently, financial blogger Barry Ritholtz has embraced the motto as his raison d'etre.

Ritholtz writes the popular financial/cultural blog The Big Picture, where, among other things, he loves to take the headline numbers and debunk them. He understands the numbers. By day he's a market strategist and fund manager.

Today he rolls his eyes and examines the latest U.S. Census and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development numbers that show a 4.8% rise in new home sales.

What the mainstream press either overlooks or fails to mention is that pesky little margin of error. For September's numbers, for example, the margin of error renders the data statistically insignificant.

So statistically speaking, there was no rise. Nothing getting better on the housing front.

Damned lies and statistics. Mark Twain would surely be a fan of the Big Picture.

The housing sector finally got a break today after the Commerce Department reported that September new home sales were up from the August numbers, to 770,000 in the month from 735,000 in August. Analysts were at best cautiously optimistic, stating that one month's report does not mean the downtrend in housing has been reversed, and also that the Commerce Department numbers are not always accurate. The figures were revised down by almost 10% in August, in fact.

However, Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL), as a luxury home builder, is somewhat less exposed to the credit problems plaguing others around the industry. If you think the September sales numbers are a good sign, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on TOL.

Like others in the housing sector, TOL has been beaten down this year, from a high of $35.64 in February to a low of $18.85 in August. The stock has seen some gains over the last two months, but continues to struggle against resistance in the low $20s. TOL opened this morning at $22.16. So far today the stock has hit a low of $22 and a high of $23.19. As of 2:50, TOL is trading at $22.49, up $0.31 (1.40%). The chart for TOL looks bullish with slight deterioration, while S&P gives the stock a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy rating.

Stock futures are pointing to a mix to lower open of the U.S. stock markets at this time with the S&P 500 futures showing a possible higher start and the Nasdaq a lower start. Investors await data on the housing market today as they look for direction.

Yesterday, stocks edged lower ending a three-day rally as some housing data released yesterday was weak and oil prices again became a concern and futures closing above $69 a barrel, a nine-month high.

Today, oil prices edged lower, but unrest in Nigeria continued to pressure the market.
What investors are really waiting for today is data on the housing market as May housing starts and building permits are due at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Economists estimate that housing starts fell to an annual rate of 1.48 million in May from 1.53 million in April. Permits are expected to rise to an annual pace of 1.47 million from 1.46 million last month. While housing starts is indeed expected to slip, the forward looking indicator, the permits, is expected to rebound from the 10-year low it reached in April. Try as Wall Street might to get past the weakness in the sector, any indication of worsening or spreading to other sectors will undoubtedly affect the market.

Overseas, Japanese stocks ended flat today as declines in banks and electric utilities offset gains in shipbuilders and paper makers. In general, however, Asian stocks ended higher with Honk Kong Hang Seng index jumping 1.7%. Singapore and South Korea hit new highs.
Meanwhile, European markets are mixed. Some oil stocks showed gains, but retailers, being the worst performers, offset these gains. British supermarket giant Tesco (LSE: TSCO) reported slowing non-food sales and its shares were hit with a 3.2% decline.

Corporate news:

If for some strange reason you missed it yesterday, the chatter that was picked up all day long yesterday ended up being true and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) CEO Terry Semel resigned. He will remain as chairman. Co-founder of Yahoo!, Jerry Yang, was appointed CEO and Sue Decker, president. Here is what Jerry had to say in Yahoo!'s blog, Yodel Anecdotal, about his new job. Here at BloggingStocks we had a myriad of opinions, of course. You can read them on the Yahoo! blog. Yahoo! could give support to the market today, but the question is how much. YHOO is now up 2.6% in pre-market trading (7:28 a.m.). Yahoo rose 3.5% in Germany.

Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) is set to release its second quarter earnings this morning and at 10:00 a.m. Brian White will be liveblogging the webcast. Here is Brian's earning preview.

Last week, commodity and company earnings sent some seriously mixed signals.

Gold, historically a pretty good indicator of excess money flowing through the economy, took off, jumping over $20 an ounce. Gold has been in a tight trading range the past year or so, a sign that Fed policy was correct by halting rate increases. However, it is tough to read what last week's rally was all about.

Housing data, conversely, an important component of the overall economy, was simply awful. Reports from the home improvement retailers -- Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) -- were exceptionally weak, with same store sales down 5% to 11% depending upon the month you wanted to look at.

However, macro data such as employment and wage growth remain good, but employment is a lagging, not a leading, indicator.

With that said, in addition to gold, a lot of other commodities took off during the week.

In the tech world, semiconductors, one of the most hypersensitive economic indicators, fundamentals have been deteriorating since November 2006 and there is little evidence this market has bottomed.

Signals are too confusing to be comfortable with the market. Most indexes have had great rallies since the fall. It is time to take some money off of the table. There is little evidence that 1st quarter earnings will be that good.

In addition, another consideration is a seasonal factor. The Fed tends to add more money to the economy in the second half of the year and slows down money supply growth in the first half of the year. This is a reason why the market's performance tends to be weakest during the April through September time period and stronger from October through March.

These mixed signals tell me to start pruning your portfolio. We are in for a bumpy ride and it will be nice to have some cash on the sideline to do some buying when market volatility and investors' fear increases.