My Comments: The other day, on February 17th, I had a post that explained how today is NOT 1929 all over again. If you found that story, and this chart interesting, then here is a follow up. Hopefully, it will help you navigate the waters as they are flowing today in 2014.

Chris Ciovacco, Ciovacco Capital Management / Feb. 25, 2014

Houses Appreciate At Slower Rate

With the Federal Reserve tapering their bond-buying program, investors are looking for evidence of an improving economy. Given that mortgage rates are well off their recent lows, it is not surprising to see some slowing momentum in the housing market, which is exactly what the data showed Tuesday.

From Bloomberg:
The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities rose 13.4 percent from December 2012 after increasing 13.7 percent in the year ended in November, the group said today in New York. It was the first deceleration since June. The gain matched the median estimate of 33 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. “The housing recovery continues, but perhaps not as vigorously as it did in the first half of last year,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the best forecaster of the home-price index during the past two years, according to Bloomberg calculations. “Even so, appreciation trends still look pretty good even though they may not be as strong as they were.”

Head-and-Shoulders Off Table

On February 11 we outlined a simple “don’t lose too much sleep” strategy for the scary 1929 parallel chart that has been making the rounds on Wall Street. The 1929-like scenario involved a pattern known as a head-and-shoulders top. Monday’s new intraday high in the S&P 500 pretty much put the head-and-shoulders scenario to bed, which for the most part negates the 1929 analogy for the S&P 500.

( If this topic interests you, then I encourage you to click HERE to get to the source article. There are a number of charts which are important for you to see. I could probably replicate them here but… If you’ve come this far, then click HERE to find the rest of the article and the charts. – TK )