In our special focus this week on Residential Construction, we spoke with David Goldberg of UBS, who relayed told us a little bit about when he thought the Residential Construction market would bottom out:

Mr. Goldberg: The first thing I’ll tell you is, I think we are getting closer to the bottom of the cycle. We’ve been saying for some time that we think the fourth quarter 2009 will be the trough in housing. We really look at both price and sales pace. From a sales pace perspective, which a lot of folks are looking at now, I probably agree that it is not going to go down dramatically from here. We have to get some price stability and that’s not going to happen until we start to see supply let up and we just don’t believe that that’s going to happen until the end of this year. So with that in mind, we think we are probably six to eight months away from the trough in housing.

For the complete Residential Construction report, including the full interview with Mr. Goldberg, including stock picks, and an outlook for investors, click here.

For our special focus on Corporate Software, analyst Walter Pritchard of Cowen & Co., LLC gives us his pick in this space, McAfee (MFE):

Mr. Pritchard: I think investors are going to be shocked at how resilient the consumer security business is…In a market where PC shipments are slower, you fall back on your installed base, and all those companies have done a good job of up-selling the installed base.  For McAfee specifically, the number of computers they ship on right now versus a year ago is up significantly, so there’s a share gain going on in the PC market for McAfee independent of what’s going on with PC shipments.

For the complete Corporate Software report, including a full interview with Mr. Pritchard, as well as a wide variety of other analysts in this space, click here.

Karen Mazurekewich wrote a story for the Financial Post examining the need for new leaders to serve as CEOs.  The writer examined the difficulties that many financial firms and their CEOs have experienced over the last two years.  In the piece the author quotes a number of academics who are pushing for changes in CEO leadership.  

“The world is crying out for a new type of leader,” says Carol Stephenson, dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.

Ms. Stephenson says today’s leaders need to be more “collaborative” and “encourage their teams to work across an enterprise or industry.” 

The story is brief but worth a quick read.  

Del Jones and Barbara Hansen wrote a story for USA TODAY assessing CEO compensation during 2008.  While overall CEO salaries may have taken a slight hit, they still seem to be raking it in.  According to the story,

A USA TODAY analysis of executive compensation data provided by the Associated Press found that the median salary of a CEO running an S&P 500 company rose 3% last year to surpass $1 million. The median bonus and other incentive cash dropped 27% to $1.3 million, and total compensation was down 7% to $7.6 million.

In many cases, it was worse than it looked, because Securities and Exchange Commission rules require companies to value options and other stock grants based on the dates they were granted. According to AP, 90% of the $1.2 billion in CEO options granted last year are under water, which means the current stock price is too low to yield a profit.

… But don’t go looking for CEOs in bread lines just yet. The brutal bear market that hurt them so badly in 2008 could actually help them later by creating ripe conditions for huge potential paydays. Because of 13-year lows in stocks in early 2009, most CEOs received additional stock grants and stock options this year at fire-sale prices.

Decide for yourself what you think, take a look at the story.