In early afternoon trade on Wall Street on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.05 percent higher to 13,885.22, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.3 percent to 2,707.02 and the S&P 500 had gained 0.17 percent to 1,528.07.
House builders were mixed, with some seeing gains even though the Commerce Department reported that new home sales were down again in August, dropping 8.3 percent even though analysts had expected a decline of just around 4.6 percent.
In addition, KB Home (NYSE: KBH) reported that revenues were down 32 percent in the quarter ending 31 August.
Besides reporting losses in the quarter, the CEO of KB Home said that he sees the housing market continuing its decline into next year, with no sign of recovery yet in sight.
Still, just before 1 p.m. New York time KB had added 5 cents to $24.13.
At the same time, Centex (NYSE: CTX) was up 22 cents to $25.66 and D. R. Horton (NYSE: DHI) had gained 2 cents to $12.88.
On the other hand Lennar (NYSE: LEN) had dropped 56 cents to $21.70.
Elsewhere, oil refiners were lower after analyst comment that their earnings are likely to see declines in the third quarter.
The analyst, from Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, rated the sector at “market weight”.
Individually, he rated Valero (NYSE: VLO) at “outperform”, but its shares still were 82 cents lower to $67.44.
Frontier Oil (NYSE: FTO) was $1.05 lower to $42.22, while Holly Corp. fell $1.51 to $60.52, Sunoco (NYSE: SUN) was down $1.79 to $71.58, and Tesoro (NYSE: TSO) dropped $2.16 to $47.54.