Retail Stock Prices On Fire, Home Builders Burning Down (URBN, COH, LTD, PHM, DHI)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 4:07AM EDT · Published Nov 19, 2:19PM EST

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There is a strong revival of retail stocks occurring after two years of the damage done by a free fall in consumer expenditures. Retail companies that are part of the S&P 500 have been among the top gainers so far this year. For the last week Urban Outfitters (NASDAQ: URBN) is up over 11%. Coach (NYSE: COH) has risen 5% as has Limited Brands (NYSE: LTD). Limited and Urban Outfitters are also among the stocks with the largest increases for the month to date and year to date.

Among the shares that have been hurt the most are those of homebuilders. S&P recently predicted that home prices will drop another 7% to 10% in 2011. Home sales and housing starts have been poor while foreclosures remain high. PulteGroup (NYSE PHM) fell 10% this last week and D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI) was down 7%. PulteGroup is also on the declines for the month to date and year to date.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.