"June absolutely fell off the Richter scale for us"

CEO of homebuilder D.R. Horton in Q&A session on the company earning's conference call, about 01:37:15 in.

D.R. Horton Earnings Conference Call July 20, 2006.

The stock market is telegraphing a fairly serious slowdown. Lots of bad news out there and several smart investors calling for caution. (See 'Jim Rogers: "Be very careful.") I would post the chart of a homebuilding stock, but I run a family friendly blog.

Peter Thiel predicted a housing nuclear winter leading to a recession, and uh-oh, recently long bonds are outperforming stocks, even with the idea that the Fed is still in a raising mood. (See 'Man cannot live by energy stocks alone.')

And Barry Ritholz pointed out how important housing was to the economy over the past couple of years. (See 'Half of New Jobs Are Real Estate Related' and 'Housing is Dominating Economic Activity, part 3.')

Energy stocks are cheap, oil prices are high, oil futures prices are high, demand has not yet declined to any substantial extent, but technically energy stocks are weak (See '200 Days Later' and 'Crude oil to $100?').

Caution may be the better part of valor here.