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US Home Prices Unexpectedly Jumped In May; Chicago Leading, Vegas Lagging

Zero Rss
3 weeks ago
US Home Prices Unexpectedly Jumped In May; Chicago Leading, Vegas Lagging

Having declined for three straight months, US home prices in America's 20 largest cities was expected to rise very marginally (+0.1% MoM) in May (according to the latest data from S&P Cotality Case-Shiller).

Instead, home prices accelerated 0.3% MoM (better than expected), lifting the annual appreciation to +1.63% YoY - the fastest annual price gain since July 2025...

“Monthly price appreciation continues to reflect the seasonal strength often associated with the spring homebuying season,” Rebecca Kaufman, Associate Director of Commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indice observed.

“On a non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) basis, the National Index rose 0.6% in May from April, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites each advanced 0.9%."

After adjusting for seasonality, the National Index declined 0.05% month over month, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites posted modest gains of 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively.

"The gap between the NSA and seasonally adjusted results underscores the extent to which seasonal factors are supporting headline price growth," added Kaufman.

"Even where prices increased on a seasonally adjusted basis, gains remained modest and were negative in real terms.

The geographic dispersion of home price trends continues to persist.

Kaufman noted that while major metropolitan areas in the Northeast and Midwest recorded year-over-year gains exceeding the national average, many metropolitan areas in the West and Sunbelt regions remain under pressure.

“For the third consecutive month, Chicago led all metros with a 6.9% annual increase in May, followed by New York (4.2%) and Cleveland (3.1%).

In contrast, Las Vegas posted the largest decline, falling 1.9% year over year, with Seattle (-1.8%), Denver (-1.8%), and Tampa (-1.6%) also registering notable losses."

Given the lag in Case-Shiller data, mortgage rates could argue that prices should be starting to rise here...

“Affordability remains a significant headwind for the housing market,” Kaufman concluded.

“Thirty-year mortgage rates increased to 6.5% in May, leaving the ultra-low 3% borrowing costs a distant memory. At the same time, stubbornly high inflation rates are keeping both the cost of home financing and the cost of living high for prospective buyers.

“Against this backdrop, housing demand remains constrained, elevated borrowing costs continue to discourage potential homebuyers, and housing values decline in real terms for existing homeowners.”

But the oddly tight coupling with Fed Reserves suggests the path is lower...

Interestingly, for the 12th consecutive month, inflation outpaced national home price appreciation, with CPI running well above the 1.6% annual gain, extending the streak of negative real home price returns.

Is this Trump's 'affordability' plan kicking in? Or just lagged rates finally impacting reality.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 09:13
Tyler Durden

This Is The Chart That Jensen Huang Does Not Want You To See

Zero Rss
3 weeks ago
This Is The Chart That Jensen Huang Does Not Want You To See

In October 2025, while the world and his pet rabbit was buying anything-AI with both hands and feet, we were the first to warn that "AI Is Now A Debt Bubble Too, Quietly Surpassing All Banks To Become The Largest Sector In The Market"...

...as the world began to wake up to the negative free cash flow implications of the unprecedented CapEx spend required to achieve AI-Utopia... and therefore the need to fund that via debt (and equity)...

The poster-child at the time was Oracle, which had seen its stock explode higher on the back of the latest circular-financing deal involving OpenAI and NVDA, "The dissonance between ORCL equity dreamers and credit realists is dramatic to say the least."

With the interconnected web of reacharound deals growing more and more complex... to keep the dream alive.

Following our exposé, several in the mainstream media started picking up on this - including CNBC's David Faber - but as AI stocks reaccelerated off the Iran-ceasefire-dip lows, momentum-chasers dominated any fundamental (real world economics) threat.

But, that reality was still there, getting worse, growing larger, and being recognized by more and more credit market professionals as "an issue", and we continued to document...

And most recently, just this week: "Goldman's One-Delta Desk Weighs 'High Degree Of Policy Reflexivity' Versus Hyperscaler Debt Doubts"

And now even Fitch Ratings is realizing, just 10 months after us, that the real bubble is in AI Debt.

Simply put, as Goldman's Rich Privorotsky noted this week: the cracks around hyperscaler financing continue to widen as the market struggles to find the appropriate clearing price for companies that have historically run under levered balance sheets but now have enormous capital ambitions. 

The last week or so has seen questions about hyperscalers' ability to fund the massive CapEx required to keep the AI dream alive with the explosion in hyperscaler credit risk finally starting to weigh on the stocks of those companies (GOOGL didn't help with no credible visibility on ROI to ease those fears)...

The cost of protecting against default is rising across all the hyperscalers (with ORCL and CRWV most worrisome)...

All of which brings us to Nvidia...

But, it is NVDA's credit risk that has surged by the most on record after reports of the chipmaker being in conversations on hundreds of billions of artificial intelligence infrastructure deals stoked fears about the company’s obligations.

July 24: Nvidia announced a $500 billion partnership with SK Group, the parent company of South Korean chipmaking giant SK Hynix

July 24: Nvidia announced a $1 billion investment in Naver as part of a partnership to help build South Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure.

July 26: The WSJ reported that Nvidia is helping back roughly $250 billion in financing for OpenAI's planned 10-gigawatt AI data center in Ohio

July 26: The WSJ also reported that Nvidia is discussing up to $350 billion in financing to help OpenAI purchase its AI chips

July 27: Nvidia deepened its partnership with Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever

The increasingly interconnected web of dependencies between technology manufacturers and AI startups continues to stir unease. The risk of these “circular” deals was highlighted last year here, and although markets forgot all about it, they are now once again freaking out.

For JonesTrading chief strategist Mike O’Rourke, investors can “talk about the compute storage all they want and the fundamental demand, but it is clear that a significant portion of Nvidia’s sales come from an ecosystem that Nvidia is artificially creating.”

The result is that the “only certainty one can have is the high degree of uncertainty in the AI environment,” he said. 

All of which snapped NVDA's 5Y CDS spread up to 82bps (intraday) - almost double what it was a week ago...

The level of borrowing across the AI infrastructure likely requires investment-grade ratings, which are difficult for the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic PBC to currently support given they are rapidly burning cash to grow their businesses.

So, backing from big (better-rated) firms can help debt that funds AI infrastructure spending win high-grade ratings.

“The amount of capex needed to build out the AI infrastructure is massive, and debt markets are being inundated with supply,” said Sal Naro, chief investment officer of Coherence Credit Strategies.

“There’s a fear of financial alchemy driven by opaqueness, off-balance-sheet transactions and intercompany relationships, which could result in credit rating downgrades.”

Credit-market signals are a more relevant short term gauge than EPS valuations for hyperscalers, notes Manish Kabra at Societe Generale.

When there is a peak in CDS spreads, it should signal the market beginning to price in an improvement in hyperscalers’ free cash flow and an end to a derating.

But an inflection in FCF is not expected until the second half of 2027, Kabra adds.

And, like everything, there is a limit to what the market will take before those 'better-rated' companies face the same leverage test that the startups do.

All of which brings us to the chart that we are sure Jensen Huang would not want to see emblazened across trading desks.

One of these things is not like the other.

From the inception of NVDA CDS last November until the end of March (ceasefire lows), the two markets were well-synced, as you would expect...

But since then, the divergence has been dramatic (and NVDA's share price is starting to show it)...

While NVDA's stock is 'off the highs' NVDA's credit risk is signaling something considerably worse and there are big tests ahead this week for Nvidia and the broader AI trade.

Hyperscalers Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are set to report earnings across a two-day period. Investors will be closely watching their CapEx guidance, having proven sensitive to heavy spending in recent months. (Just ask Alphabet how their capex forecast was received last week.)

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 08:45
Tyler Durden

Incompatible With Western Society...?

Zero Rss
3 weeks ago
Incompatible With Western Society...?

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,

The comment section under Al Jazeera's Facebook coverage of the Berlin Pride attack has laid bare a reality Western elites still refuse to face.

Hundreds of users with Arab and Muslim names flooded the post with open celebration of the Islamist vehicle-ramming that killed one woman and injured 29 others.

Laughing emojis made up roughly a third of the reactions. Comments praising the attacker with "Alhamdulillah," "Jihad," and "Thank God" stacked up without shame.

The comment section of Al Jazeera on Facebook has become controversial after hundreds of Islamists openly expressed support for the recent car ramming attack against an LGBT parade in Berlin.

Around a third of the reactions to the post are laughing emojis.

Comments from users... pic.twitter.com/j4DAmxj7FC

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 27, 2026

The Al Jazeera English Facebook post in question is this one:

There is also an earlier "BREAKING" post about the parade being called off that drew similar reactions:

Laughing emojis made up a conspicuous portion of the reaction totals. These were not isolated trolls. They formed a consistent chorus of approval for the deliberate targeting of people at a Pride event.

The responses also include:

  • "Alhamdu lillah"
  • "Jihad"
  • "Thank God"
  • "Good news indeed"
  • "god is great"
  • "that's good news"
  • "why only one?"
  • "14 idiots injured"
  • "I hope the driver is ok"
  • "please make a gofundme for that driver's future"
  • "The driver deserves a medal ?"
  • "Not all heroes wear capes"
  • "9ice work" / "nice work"
  • "Salute"

These comments sat in plain view under an official Al Jazeera English post, making the ideological incompatibility impossible for anyone still paying attention to ignore.

This is the predictable product of importing large numbers of people whose core religious and cultural worldview treats homosexuality as an abomination worthy of death.

The same ideology that drove 21-year-old Abdul Ballout - German-born of Lebanese origin - to plow a white van into a crowd near Berlin's Christopher Street Day celebrations on Saturday night, then continue the assault with a blade.

Ballout's history is insane. He had already tried to join Islamic State in 2025, traveling to Lebanon to make contact with the group. He was arrested there, served a short sentence, and was flown back to Germany.

In May 2026 a Berlin juvenile court convicted him of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and of publishing Islamic State propaganda. He received a suspended sentence, was ordered into deradicalization counseling he barely attended, and walked free. By the weekend he was driving a rental van into Pride revelers in Tiergarten park.

Holy shit. It gets even crazier.

Abdul Ballout had already planned a terrorist attack once before. He then fled to his homeland Lebanon. Germany brought him back.

Abdul was reportedly scheduled to attend a "deradicalisation course" TOMORROW.

What in the Suicidal Empathy is... pic.twitter.com/4UGFkwNLRa

— ???? ???? ?? ?? (@NiohBerg) July 26, 2026

Police tracked him down the following evening in a Spandau garden allotment. When he charged officers with a sharp instrument they shot him dead. The manhunt was over. The policy failure was not.

BREAKING:

The Lebanese Islamist terrorist Abdul Ballout has been shot and killed by the German police in Berlin moments ago after attacking them with a knife.

He carried out a truck-ramming attack against the Berlin Gay Pride parade yesterday, killing 1 and wounding 29 pic.twitter.com/aC2i4Pj3C3

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 26, 2026

Ballout's record was no secret. He had prior convictions for assault and robbery. Prosecutors had sought a longer non-suspended sentence. The justice system released him anyway under the soft logic of juvenile law and "deradicalization."

Germany's police officers' association head Dirk Peglow later called the approach too lax: "With people who pose such a threat, the end of their time in detention must not be the end of state supervision."

This is the logical end point. https://t.co/jaWP8rWZFG

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) July 26, 2026

While the blood was still fresh, Berlin Pride organizers issued a statement warning against using the attack "for political ends."

"People are trying to divide our society and set some people against others. As the CSD in Berlin, we will not allow this," they said. A speaker at a related vigil went further, admitting the first thought after hearing of the car attack was "Hopefully it's not a Kanake... hopefully it's a Christian white person." When it turned out otherwise, the response was more intersectionality.

The organisers of Berlin Pride say yesterday's attack must not be used "for political ends". A terrorist attack is the very essence of political ends. What do they want people to do? Sing 'Don't Look Back In Anger' and then forget about it? Enough with the suicidal empathy. https://t.co/Q77z0R5TQA

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) July 26, 2026

An Islamist with a documented terrorism history is released, attacks a Pride event, and the institutional left pivots immediately to protect the ideology and the migration system that enabled him.

The same voices that lecture endlessly about "queer safety" suddenly discover that naming the ideology is the real danger. "Queers for Palestine" marched in solidarity with the very ideology that produces these attackers, only for leftists to blame conservatives, GB News, or "whiteness" once the van hit the crowd.

The Al Jazeera comment section simply removed the filter. When the attacker is one of their own, celebration replaces condemnation.

Western societies have spent decades pretending that mass migration from cultures that explicitly reject core liberal freedoms - especially sexual freedom - can be managed with counseling sessions and rainbow flags. The body count and the Facebook reactions say otherwise.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the attack "abhorrent" and an assault on openness and freedom. Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner described it as "an attack on our way of life and coexistence." Fine words. They do not change the fact that Ballout was known, convicted, released, and free to act. Nor do they erase the public cheering that followed.

Europe continues to import populations whose stated beliefs and demonstrated behavior are incompatible with the societies that host them.

The results are written in blood on the streets of Berlin and in the laughing emojis under an Al Jazeera post. The refusal to confront that incompatibility is no longer a policy disagreement. It is a death wish.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 08:05
Tyler Durden

zero rss