The Federal Housing Finance Agency released their Housing Price Index results for July this week (you can read the full report here). According to the report, home prices in the U.S. fell .5 percent in July, and fell a total of 3.3 percent for the 12-month period ending in July 2010.
In addition to the negative housing news putting off investor optimism, investors must have allowed the Federal Reserve’s cautious outlook in the FOMC statement, released yesterday, to influence their moods because U.S. markets were down on Wednesday. In the FOMC statement, the committee acknowledged that, “…the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months.” While they made no more aggressive changes to their monetary policy, they did agree that they would continue to keep the fed rate at its current level and would invest in treasuries. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 21.72 points to 10,739.31 and the Nasdaq dropped 14.80 points to 2,334.55. The S&P 500 also fell 5.50 points to 1,134.28.
European markets were down again on Wednesday while Asian markets were mixed.
Stocks in the news: eBay Inc (NASDAQ: EBAY), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT), Adobe Systems Inc (NASDAQ: ADBE).
