Is Toll Brothers A Bellweather For the Housing Market?

Fox News reports:

Luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL) Tuesday further reduced its forecast for home sales in the current year, as new orders for the first quarter fell 29 percent on slumping demand.

Toll's is often seen as a bellwether for the U.S. housing market. The company's deteriorating forecasts may indicate that the slowing U.S. housing market may be declining faster than previously thought, Raymond James and Associates analyst Rick Murray said.

"Their quarter ends Jan. 31, and a lot of people have been hypothesizing that the weaknesses we saw in October, November and December would perhaps turn around in the beginning of the year," he said. "This would seem to indicate that those trends have not reversed course and perhaps have even accelerated to the downside."

Toll Brothers has done a 50% drop in price.