Below plotting the sales of existing homes
The Lumber & Wood Production industry may not be the sexiest of markets to invest in, but it is an important one nonetheless given its intimate ties with the housing market.
Ever since the U.S. housing market imploded from 2006-08, the U.S. Federal Reserve has embarked on a plan to reinflate residential property values. How? By slashing interest rates to near zero, the lowest they have been in history. The intent was to stimulate home buying by making it cheaper to get mortgages. And it worked, as noted in the graph below plotting the sales of existing homes.
In it, we can clearly see the inflating of the housing bubble to its peak of more than 7 million home sales annually by late 2005, followed by the bubble's burst down to less than 4 million annual home sales by 2009. But thanks to ultra-low mortgage rates made possible by the Federal Reserve's slashing of the inter-bank borrowing rate, existing home sales picked-up dramatically, reaching 5.5 million units annually by late 2009.
