Record Homebuilder Losing Streak Shows No Signs of Letting Up

(Bloomberg) -- Homebuilder stocks are having a rough year, and there’s no indication that the misery will relent any time soon.

The 36-member SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF, ticker XHB, fell for the 14th-consecutive trading day on Monday, the longest losing streak in the exchange-traded fund’s almost 13-year history. The culprit? Lingering fears of a slowdown in the housing market, disappointing economic data and lackluster earnings reports, to name a few.

Investors have yanked cash from the fund for seven straight weeks, the longest streak of outflows since 2013. XHB saw close to 16 million shares traded for the week ending on Oct. 5, the most since July and significantly higher than the weekly average for the past year.

Lennar Corp., which makes up more than 4 percent of the ETF’s exposure, has contributed the most to XHB’s decline since Sept. 18, the day before the fund’s losing streak started. Shares of the Miami-based homebuilder have slumped about 12 percent since then, and the firm’s disappointing third-quarter orders and guidance cut didn’t help.

At the end of September, KB Home saw its stock slump despite better-than-expected orders and earnings that beat the highest estimate on Wall Street, as investors became increasingly wary of a stalling market.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lily Katz in New York at lkatz31@bloomberg.net;Carolina Wilson in New York City at cwilson166@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Steven Fromm, Will Daley

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