KB Home, headquartered in Los Angeles, is one of America's largest homebuilders, with domestic operations in California, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. In FY23, the company delivered 13,236 homes, generating revenue of $6.4 billion. The West Coast segment represented 45% of FY23 homebuilding revenue with just 25% of homes delivered, helped by an average home price of $690,000. The company targets the lower-middle portion of the market, with approximately half of sales to first-time buyers. Most of the homes the company sells are priced for the median-income household in that market, but KBH has also expanded into higher-priced markets. KBH's average selling price decreased 4% to $481,300 in FY22. The company's fiscal year ends on November 30.

With earnings season in full swing, the volume of insider transactions has fallen to seasonal lows, with only 615 transactions meeting the criteria for inclusion in Vickers Weekly Insider Report. While that is down from the recent weekly high of 2,284 transactions, there is still noteworthy data to consider.

The cold hard message is sinking in. Higher rates are here to stay for longer than expected. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said multiple times that the Fed will be 'data-driven' when deciding on monetary policy. And the data has spoken. First, let's look at inflation. There has been great progress made in knocking inflation down from its peak of 9.1% in June of 2022. But achieving progress at the current lower levels, with inflation in the low-3% range, as expected, has been difficult. The Fed has been specific, saying inflation needs to be at 2% before restrictive policy will be eased. The Fed was patient after the January inflation data, and again with February data. But when March showed persistently higher prices, the Fed threw came right out and said that change can wait. Chairman Powell said the following last week. "The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence..." and "If higher inflation does persist, we can maintain the current level of restriction for as long as needed." Now let's consider unemployment. The Fed again has been specific. Officials are looking for a 4.1% unemployment rate to gently (hopefully) slow the economy. Currently, the rate is not budging and is vacillating between 3.8% and 3.9%. Given the current macroeconomic backdrop, the following is a list of industries and companies we like that should benefit from a sustained period of higher interest rates. All are BUY-rated at Argus.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.