Builder stocks sinking

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that homebuilder stocks have been getting beat up very recently.But not all is grim:

Fred Cooper, senior vice president of finance at Toll Brothers, argues that his company's recent 15 percent stock price decline is not unexpected after such an uptrend.

"Our backlog of homes to build under contract is up 55 percent from a year ago," Mr. Cooper said.

In other words, almost half of the company's 2006 revenue is already in the backlog, he said.

Mr. Mack of Standard & Poor's estimated that homebuilding shares could easily run up 10 percent to 15 percent in the next year.