Exchange-traded funds that invest in stocks linked to home builders soared this week, blowing past the strong performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 index.
Shares of the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF
ITB
finished Friday with a 13.1% gain for the week, scoring their best weekly performance since May 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF
XHB
jumped 11% this week for its biggest weekly gain since November 2022.
“I like homebuilders,” said Tom Graff, chief investment officer at Facet, in a phone interview Friday. “There is so much pent-up demand for housing.”
Most people with an existing home don’t want to sell because “they have a great mortgage as it is and they don’t want to reset it at 7%,” he said. As a result, new home sales have climbed even as existing home sales have slumped to multi-decade lows, according to Graff.
Meanwhile, a recent decline in 10-year Treasury yields may translate into a bit lower mortgage rates, potentially benefiting home builders, he said.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
dropped 28.9 basis points this week to 4.557%, its biggest weekly decline since March based on 3 p.m. Eastern Time levels, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
As for the U.S. stock market, all three major benchmarks booked big weekly gains.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
closed Friday up 5.1% for the week, scoring its largest weekly percentage increase since October 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The S&P 500
SPX
logged a 5.9% weekly gain and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP
jumped 6.6% for the week.
Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq notched their best weekly performance based on percentage gains since November 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
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