Think twice about near-term market bottom
The housing market will look like a slow-draining bathtub for at least the next couple of years, with defaults and foreclosures likely to exceed new purchases. The unsold inventory will take a long time to recede to normal levels. And until the bottom in housing is visible, no one can be certain how bad the credit losses will be. We are so far outside any historical patterns that forecasts have become exercises in creative writing. Reader Jeff sent along this cheery view from Ken Murray of Blue Planet Investing (the whole post is worth reading): The current situation in the US banking market is without precedent. Never before in a time of near full employment and record corporate profitability have we seen such huge levels of bad debts. By our own estimates bad debts in the US banking market are likely to rise to somewhere in the order of $300bn to $450bn. Other estimates set the figure much higher. This is important because the bad debts that have been incurred so far are entirely due...