

August 15 is supposed to be right in the middle of the dog days of August. But we learned recently that the phrase “dog days of August” relates to the period that Sirius, a star known as the “Dog Star,” rises at the same time as the sun. This period is typically in late July until early August. Thus, the phrase is also known more generally as the “dog days of summer.”
What does the dog days of summer mean for the markets? Not only are families taking vacations, so are institutions. The Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee does not meet in August. Congress is in recess and the President is on a long working vacation. Even equity traders and market analysts are on vacation, which typically results in lower trading volume for stocks, bonds and more. Thus, everyone should be taking a long-deserved break during August.
Does that mean that the month will be completely quiet? We can’t really predict a complete time of rest for the markets. Traditionally, during times of lower trading volume, any type of major event could produce more volatility than usual. And, though it seems that everyone in D.C. is on vacation, the world does not go to sleep. Nor does the weather. For our part, we do hope that everyone has a restful remainder of the summer and that the quiet enables those economic sleeping dog days to lie about as well.
A personal note. I was lucky enough to be the low qualifier and therefore the #1 seed in our Club Championship at Cripple Creek Golf & Country Club to be played this coming weekend. I was very fortunate to shoot a one over par 73 which included a chip-in eagle on the 18th hole.

August 11, 2017
Daily Value | Monthly Value | |
August 10 | July | |
6-month Treasury Security | 1.14% | 1.13% |
1-year Treasury Security | 1.22% | 1.22% |
3-year Treasury Security | 1.49% | 1.54% |
5-year Treasury Security | 1.78% | 1.87% |
10-year Treasury Security | 2.20% | 2.32% |
12-month LIBOR | 1.727% (July) | |
12-month MTA | 0.889% (July) | |
11th District Cost of Funds | 0.657% (June) | |
Prime Rate | 4.25% (June) |


The National Association of Realtors released a report that said foreign buyers and recent immigrants spent an estimated $153 billion on American properties in the year ending March 2017. That was a 49% increase over the previous year and the highest level since record-keeping began in 2009. The purchases accounted for 10% of the total value of existing home sales in the U.S. The report did not include new homes. America’s neighbors to the north were one big factor behind the surge. Canadian real estate investors nearly doubled their purchases of American homes over the period because of the relative affordability of properties in the States. Many Canadians have been squeezed out of property markets in cities like Toronto and Vancouver that have experienced rapid price gains. Canadians were the second biggest foreign purchasers of homes after the Chinese. Buyers from China shelled out nearly $32 billion over the period, while Canadians spent $19 billion. Foreign buyers had to brush off U.S. political turmoil in order to make their purchases. “The political and economic uncertainty both here and abroad did not deter foreigners from exponentially ramping up their purchases of U.S. property over the past year,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. Source: CNN/Money
Competition is heating up among millennials and baby boomers for smaller, more affordable homes — but builders have been slow to meet demand. That may be showing signs of changing. Home sizes are beginning to shrink, which may also help prices edge down, too. “We are starting to see [smaller] starter homes come back,” says Rick Palacios Jr., director of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting. The uptick started slightly in mid-2016 as employment and wages rose. More buyers are “now in that life stage of their early 30s [where] they’ve got a good job now, they’re getting married, they’re having kids,” Palacios says. Some builders are heading farther from cities, where land is cheaper, or they may construct more homes on smaller lots or build a line of attached townhouses. “A builder can’t pay through the nose for land and then build a starter home on that land,” Palacios says. “It just doesn’t pencil out for them. [We’ve] started to see more builders gaining confidence in building lower-priced, smaller homes.” Nearly 29 percent of the homes built between 2010 and 2015 were 3,000 square feet or more—hardly small by any standards. More builders focused on the high end of the market following the recession and built fewer smaller homes. Census data shows that 14.72 percent of new homes in the 1990s were between 1,000 and 1,499 square feet. Between 2010 to 2015, that percentage shrunk to 9.75 percent. Source: Realtor.com