iShares DJ Home Construction ETF (ITB)

This contains some of the retail names such as Lowes (LOW-N) and Home Depot (HD-N). Feels housing recovery is a long-term theme, and we are probably in the 5^th inning of that and that it will continue.

(A Top Pick Dec 3/14. Up 7.16%.) Home construction tends to do well from about late October all the way to the present. If you have profits on this, take them now. Average return is pretty close to about 7%.

This is a pure home construction play, the actual people that build the homes, rather than the retail. We are already in the period of seasonal strength, which runs from October all the way through to the beginning of February. From the beginning of December all the way through to February 3 has produced an average return of about 11.5%, outperforming the market by about 9%. The improving labour market and the low mortgage rates will tend to benefit this through to the end of the year.

(Top Pick May 16/13, Down 4.62%) Surprised we have not seen another leg up in the housing markets. Going forward the housing market can do well. If the pause in the housing market drags out much longer he will exit this.

If you own this and your entry point was a couple of months ago, your timing was probably poor. He wouldn’t give up on this. The natural replacement of homes in the US is something like 1.5 to 1.7 million homes and for the past 6 years or so, Canada has been producing homes closer to 1 million per year. Construction hasn’t caught up to the natural replacement cycle yet. Renting has been a huge factor and he thinks this is going to change. It is now cheaper to buy a home than to rent. Over 2-3 years this is going to be a good holding. Keep an eye on the 2-10 year yield and when that steepens up a bit, that is when it is very advantageous for homebuyers as well as home construction.

(A Top Pick June 19/12. Up 56.73%.) Has pulled back a little bit but this is still a great buy. Bullish on US homebuilders.

(A Top Pick June 19/12. Up 64.01%.) Has Stops in place on this. If we are going to see a US market pullback, this one will come off.

Hold Home Depots, and single family home type stocks. Is one of his top themes.

(A Top Pick June 19/12. Up 46.32%.) (BNN showed the date as April 30/12. This was actually a top pick on June 19/12. I corrected the percent from Up 46.32% to Up 42.7%. - Bill.)

(Top Pick Jun 19/12, Up 33.97%)

(A Top Pick June 19/12. Up 33.25%.)

(A Top Pick June 19/12. Up 31.37%.) This is just getting started. Even the Bears are admitting that we are at the bottom of the housing market now.