Additional good news on the consumer banking front, which was drowned out by the nonsense the mainstream media likes to portray to unsuspecting retail investors. At least, according to CNBC’s most recent headline “U.S. existing home sales tumble in warning sign for housing market.” The argument they make is hazy at best, because there’s a lot of conflicting data points in their report. On one hand, it’s true that the data point on existing home sales has declined by 7.1 percent since last November. However, that’s only one side of the story, because the sales pace from February indicates 4.4 months to clear housing stocks, which is up from 4-months since January. In reality, six-month supply is considered healthy supply/demand. Therefore, the report could have been written as, “housing demand slows in the month of March, a small blip in data given the healthy supply/demand for existing homes.” According to a report released on March 21st 2016, the same day CNBC aired out its nonsense, RBC mentioned that the number of housing starts is starting to tick considerably higher! Here’s what RBC mentioned on Monday:Earlier this week, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that housing starts for the month of February increased by 30.9% y/y to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1,178,000 units, which was above consensus calling for 1,150,000 starts. The 30.9% y/y increase marks the largest y/y increase since November 2013 (+31.2% y/y). Additionally, single family starts of 822,000 (+37.0% y/y) finally broke above the 800K level for the first time since 2007. Multifamily starts also experienced a sizable increase (+18.7% y/y). Importantly, all four regions exhibited material gains, which speaks to the broad based nature of the housing recovery: Midwest (+77.5%y/y), Northeast (+58.7%y/y), West (+27.2%y/y) and South (+20.8%y/y). We view tight labor markets, low interest rates, a modest pace of economic expansion, and strong consumer balance sheets as key drivers of sustained demand. If housing was heading south, would it really make sense for developers to increase new home builds at its most torrid pace since 2007? It sounds like a really healthy economy and investors with exposure to well performing consumer banks like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America (BAC has very little energy exposure) would be positioned to capitalize on these broader macro trends. Source: Home Depot Furthermore, the growth in housing developments is driven by household formations in the younger demographic, which is projected to pick up over the next several years. Listening to CNBC you’d mistake that a negative blip in data establishes an inflection point in the economy. That’s why real investors ignore CNBC as their reporting is almost always awful. It’s also worth noting that single family turn over, the number of people buying houses as a percentage of total owner-occupied houses is well below the previous market cycle high of 6%. In other words, we’re not even close to a market bubble given the organic drivers to housing growth, and positive data on housing supply, which is expected to pick-up quite considerably. All of this points to considerable organic housing growth in the next couple of years. So, do yourself a favor, and do the opposite of what the media is begging you to do. Hold onto the quality bank names, and chances are things will work out.