Lumber contracts trading on the CME crashed to $653 per thousand board feet, down 51% from a high in late February of $1,336. The decline in wood prices occurred about two weeks before the Fed began hiking interest rates in mid-March. 

The Fed is expected to continue raising rates this summer. Interest rate probabilities show the Fed could hike by 50bps at three of the next FOMC meetings to suppress consumption and get inflation under control ahead of the midterm elections. However, that's going to be a challenging task, which may cause a hard landing in the economy.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell's pursuit of finding the neutral rate has already unleashed a rate shock in the housing market, with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage shooting up more than 200bps this year, from 320 bps to 557 bps. This has crushed activity for refinancing houses (remodeling) and sent mortgage applications (home construction) plunging, a sign the housing market is cooling. 

Signs of a slowdown in construction are already materializing: "Buyers don't have the same mentality of having to go out and buy 10 when they only need five," Ash Boeckholt, co-founder and chief revenue officer at online wood-products marketplace MaterialsXchange, told WSJ.