The Thanksgiving slowdown prevented me from posting the Federal Reserve's updated economic forecast. The Fed's Summary of Economic Projections are released once a quarter. They are attached to the minutes of four of the Committee’s FOMC meetings and are intended to convey information about FOMC...
The speech below was given by Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke yesterday. It is a fantastic knowledge base builder for any Fed watcher. Anyone who follows the movements of mortgage rates should be paying close attention to the communications of the Federal Reserve. I called attention to comments...
The FOMC Statement has been released.. The subtle alterations made to the statement were skewed to the bearish side of the BIG PICTURE storyline. This includes a reference of weakness abroad and definite dovish tone on inflation ("underlying inflation has trended lower" = deflationary concerns...
Mortgage rates just had another one of those "back and forth" weeks. Fortunately, while the road was rocky (lots of reprice alerts), total consumer borrowing costs went into the weekend near their most aggressive levels of the year, only slightly above record lows. The latest round of "ups...
The Federal Reserve has released the Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee Meeting held on April 27-28, 2010. Here are some of the highlights provided by Reuters: Fed April minutes show extended discussion of asset sales, but most favored deferring sales for some time Most preferred eventual sales...
Mortgage rates greatly benefited from headline news yesterday. Around mid-morning we learned that Standard and Poor's had cut Greece's government debt rating all the way down to junk. That is as low as ratings go! Stocks, which have rallied for eight consecutive weeks, sold off sharply on the...
The Federal Open Market Committee today released their monetary policy statement. From the Federal Reserve website: The Federal Reserve System, often referred to as the Federal Reserve or simply "the Fed," is the central bank of the United States. It was created by Congress to provide the nation...
Mortgage rates yesterday recovered the rate sheet losses lenders passed along to consumers last Friday. The was no specific reason for the modest improvement. Economic data was absent and trading activity was slow. For the most part, lenders were able to share small gains because mortgage-backed security...
Mortgage rates bounced back and forth in a relatively tight range before going out at their highest levels of the week last Friday. Although prices of mortgage-backed securities managed to rally of their lows of the day, most lenders did not reprice for the better. The only economic data we got today...
Mortgage rates have been under fire lately as a streak of positive economic data has forced benchmark Treasury yields higher resulting in lower mortgage-backed security prices. These MBS price depreciations have forced lenders to increase mortgage rates. This continued yesterday with another round of...