Homebuilder Stocks Ready To Implode: A Short-Seller’s ATM

Someone or some entity – likely a hedge fund – bought 4500 September $35-strike puts on XHB on Thursday last week when XHB was trading just above $39. That’s a $225,000 speculative bet that the XHB drops more than 15% by mid-September.

This morning Toll Brothers stock plunged over 7% this morning after reporting its FY Q2 earnings, missing the Wall Street brain trust consensus estimates on both revenues and income. Deliveries are slowing down, expenses are soaring (energy and lumber)and asset write-downs are accelerating. On top of this, TOL’s debt and inventory levels continue to rise.

Typical of developers, TOL will continue to use other people’s money to speculate on real estate until the market crashes, leaving creditors and shareholders holding the bag. The Company bought back 1.8 million shares. TOL has repurchased 6.2 million in its fiscal YTD. Into this buyback, insiders have dumped nearly 800,000 shares. Not one share was purchased by insiders.

I’ve been recommending shorting the homebuilders in my Short Seller’s Journal for several months. Many of my subscribers and I are making a lot money with both short term scalps and longer term puts. The best part of about this is that very few market players trade the homebuilders. This makes it easier to take advantage of inefficient price-discovery. As an example, Zack’s Equity Research was looking for an upside surprise and spike-up in the stock as recently as yesterday.

TOL’s contract cancellation rate, which has been historically well below average, rose substantially (at least for TOL) in its latest quarter, as explained by Aaron Layman, of Aaron Layman Properts:   TOL Trips On Higher Cancellation Rate.

The homebuilders are historically overvalued, especially in relation to the level of unit sales, which are still about  50% below the peak in 2005.  They also have a lot more debt and inventory relative to the unit rate of sales.  Shorting the homebuilders is the easiest area of the market to make money right now.

You can learn the truth the about the condition of the housing market and why homebuilders are down double-digits percentages this year by clicking here: SHORT SELLER’S JOURNAL info.   In addition to shorting shares, I make suggestion on using puts and market timing (I use puts).  I also report every put trade I make in each issue.