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Housing chain lags the S&P by 9.4% over 20 sessions while the index rallies 1.1%

Thursday, September 17, 2026 · as emailed at the close · the live view is always on the dashboard

Market snapshot

S&P 5007,637.05+1.1%
VIX15.4-13%
10-year4.94%-7bp
Breadth31%above 50-day · 62% a month ago

In brief

The story

The move. The Housing Chain basket of 15 names trailed the S&P by 9.4% over 20 sessions, a z of -1.0 and the 14th percentile of the trailing year. Builders FirstSource fell 20% for -1.32pp, Lennox 14% for -0.91pp and Lowe's 12% for -0.73pp, about a third of the move; Industrials cost 4.36pp and Consumer Cyclical 3.71pp. The narrower Homebuilders basket was 6.3% behind, with PulteGroup and Lennar each down 9% and D. R. Horton 8%. Today's prints: housing starts 1.275M against 1.31M expected, permits 1.394M against 1.41M.

The market. The S&P closed at 7,637.05, up 1.13%, a z of +1.3, on a session the WSJ headlined as stocks rallying and shaking off the Fed's rate hike. The VIX fell 12.8% to 15.44 and the 10-year yield dropped 7bp to 4.94%. Continuing claims printed 1730K against 1780K expected and initial claims 196K against 208K. Breadth is thin: 31% of the index sits above its 50-day average, down from 62% a month ago, a 20-session change at the 10th percentile since 2020.

The books. Momentum's long-short spread is 13.8% behind the S&P over 60 sessions, z -2.0 and the 3rd percentile of the trailing year, in its fourth session. The damage is in the short leg: Workday +73%, Veeva +65%, Salesforce +59%, Cognizant and Accenture +52%, with Technology costing 7.71pp. Regional Banks lagged 4.5% on the week, z -1.5, as M&T, Regions and PNC each fell 5%.

Who did it · 32% of the move in these names

NameWeight20dContrib
BLDR Builders FirstSource6.7%-20%-1.32pp
LII Lennox International6.7%-14%-0.91pp
LOW Lowe's6.7%-12%-0.73pp

By sector: Industrials cost 4.4pp; Consumer Cyclical cost 3.7pp.

The board · factors vs S&P 500, relative return with z vs the trailing year, sorted by the week

Factor1D5D20DYTD
S&P 500 (computed) absolute+1.1% +1.3σ+0.7% +0.2σ-0.7% -0.7σ+12.1%
Quality-0.2% -0.5σ+0.5% +0.6σ+0.3% +0.1σ+4.0%
Momentum+0.8% +0.8σ+0.4% +0.1σ+0.9% -0.1σ+16.7%
Size-0.9% -1.0σ-0.1% -0.0σ-3.5% -1.0σ-0.0%
High beta+1.2% +0.9σ+0.2% -0.1σ+2.1% +0.1σ+15.5%
Low volatility-1.0% -1.0σ-1.3% -0.5σ-2.1% -0.3σ-6.6%
Dividend yield-0.9% -1.0σ-1.4% -0.7σ-3.0% -0.8σ+3.8%
Value-1.1% -1.4σ-1.7% -1.0σ-0.7% -0.4σ+4.7%

Also

Breadth, leadership, revisions, realized vol and the baskets, every day: the dashboard. Explore correlations →. Headlines are quoted from their publishers for context.

The narrative in this brief is drafted by an AI model from Factor Watch's computed data and checked against it, but it can still be wrong — verify anything before you act on it.

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