he's robert brusca, chief economist of fact and opinion economics. bob, you say the trends are improving. what is it that you are keying in on? well, it's not one particular report. i am very happy to see the increase in new-home sales but even existing home sales have a good trend in place. they're moving up. we see house prices are improving. we see medium and average home prices for existing home goesing up, new home prices going up. these are the trends that you need in order to think that the recovery in housing is going to be real. people need to think they can buy a house. they can put their money down and the price isn't going to fall this is a very important development. >> but we just reported that still on the supply side the inventory of the number of new homes still on the high side. and also existing home sales were down in mayment does any of that concern you? >> no, it doesn't. because you know these home sale numbers are going to fluctuate month-to-month. you need to look at the trends. the trends are very clear, pressee powerful. yo