Fri, Dec 28 2018, 4:55 PM
Bonds have had their good eye on stocks for months now. Almost any instance of exceptional bond market strength has come courtesy of exceptional ...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 4:27 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower by an almost imperceptible amount today. The improvement was enough to bring the average lender to the lowest levels since ...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 10:29 AM
Analysts had expected to hear that pending home sales had a good run in November, perhaps even breaking its 10-month streak of year-over-year declines...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 9:31 AM
“Rob, should we be staffing up for another refi boom?” It seems like most lenders are pausing during the holidays to take stock of current staffing le...
Fri, Dec 28 2018, 9:17 AM
As we discuss off and on over the years, the relationship between stocks and bonds is always complicated. At times, it seems as if bond yields and st...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 5:16 PM
Is this the "big one" or isn't it?! That's what everyone with a vested interested in the stock market would like to know about the ongoing sell-off t...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 4:48 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged to slightly lower today, which is a major victory considering how yesterday left off. Specifically, bond markets had wea...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 10:06 AM
Home prices on the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA's) Housing Price Index (HPI) crept higher in October, although year over year appreciation s...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 9:10 AM
Last Wednesday was Fed day and it marked a technical breakout for bond yields. As far back as June 2018, 10yr yields had been bouncing on a floor of ...
Thu, Dec 27 2018, 8:54 AM
The US taxpayer has been bearing the credit risk of 90% of all new origination over the past 10 years. What about property/collateral risk? Yesterday ...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 4:47 PM
Bonds had a rotten day, primarily because stocks had an amazing day (although the terrible 5yr Treasury auction didn't help). In turn, stocks prima...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 4:10 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged in some cases today and higher in others. The discrepancy is a result of the timing of today's market movements. The mos...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 10:59 AM
Home prices continued to ratchet down their advances in October, fewer than half of the tracked cities saw prices increase on an unadjusted basis. The...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 10:04 AM
The title of the Day Ahead commentary on Monday was "Don't Get Too Attached." In a nutshell, the suggestion was to not get too attached to any decisi...
Wed, Dec 26 2018, 8:54 AM
This government shutdown is over 215 miles of fencing along a 2,000-mile border. Rate-wise, there is growing thought that the Fed has overshot rate ch...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 12:43 PM
Mortgage rates did nothing interesting today, as is typical for the days before and after a major holiday. Tangentially related and significantly more...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 10:19 AM
Freddie Mac reported this week that its total mortgage portfolio increased at an annualized rate of 6.8 percent in November, up from 4.7 percent the p...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 9:31 AM
The week and a half surrounding Christmas and New Years Day tends to play by its own random rules. Sometimes it fits in with the prevailing trend (in...
Mon, Dec 24 2018, 9:03 AM
I’ve been in capital markets since the mid-1980s. No presidential administration has eliminated business cycles. Although stocks have given up their g...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 4:35 PM
After quite a bit of stock/bond correlation in the run up to the Fed announcement (and in the few hours that followed), the two sides of the market ...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 3:59 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly higher yet again today. This reinforces our sense from yesterday that rates may have already found their post-F...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 12:50 PM
Households headed by self-employed persons make up about one-tenth of all households and have a median income higher than those headed by salaried per...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 9:06 AM
Welcome to the Winter Solstice with more daylight in the Northern Hemisphere every day for the next six months. Today is definitely greeted by residen...
Fri, Dec 21 2018, 8:35 AM
One of the biggest surprises I encountered as I've learned about bond markets (and financial markets in general) over the years is just how big a ro...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 5:23 PM
Stocks and bonds haven't necessarily been joined at the hip for every moment of every day recently, but there's been enough correlation to make today'...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 4:48 PM
Mortgage rates were steady to slightly higher today. As such, they remain quite close to their lowest levels in roughly 4 months--a distinction achiev...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 12:01 PM
You can cut the numbers in several ways, but no matter the way it is reported, American households are in relatively good shape when it comes to mortg...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 10:13 AM
It is still a tiny share, but Ellie Mae says, in its November Origination Insight Report that the percentage of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMS) origi...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 10:11 AM
The 2019 goals for the GSE conservatorship are a good deal more general than those put forward on the yearly Scorecard from the Federal Housing Financ...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 9:06 AM
All kinds of things are being found. A woman in Missouri’s tiny house ” was found after being stolen. Then New York Times found more money to pay its ...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 9:03 AM
When bonds have been in a relatively strong trend for better or worse heading into the 3rd week of December, we tend to see a consolidation or a conti...
Thu, Dec 20 2018, 8:24 AM
Mortgage prepayment activity reached a 10-year low in November. Black Knight said, in its "first look" at the months mortgage data, that the character...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 4:58 PM
The Fed had a chance to soothe the stock market today by doing "something dovish" with respect to monetary policy or even forward guidance. "Someth...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 4:40 PM
After a prolonged losing streak - existing home sales hadn't seen an increase since March - the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) announced a se...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 4:26 PM
Mortgage rates fell today even though the Fed "raised rates." What's up with that? There are all kinds of rates. Some are fixed. Some are adjustable. ...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 2:03 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September November indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen ...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 11:27 AM
The debate has opened again on the fate of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (the GSEs). Ten plus years after the two were put in federal conservatorship at ...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 9:23 AM
There are lots of interesting questions out there. “Why didn’t Tarzan have a beard?” for example. Another is, “Do borrowers know about low down paymen...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 9:09 AM
What is the sound that doves make? I know they can cry, according to Prince, but "to cry or not to cry" would have been a weird headline title. I'm ...
Wed, Dec 19 2018, 8:12 AM
It is sad to say, but the good news can't last forever and the recent improvement in mortgage application volume, especially for purchase mortgages, p...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 4:59 PM
We're typically talking about "the bond market in terms of 10yr Treasury yields," but in terms of PRICES , there was certainly some gravity in play c...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 4:01 PM
Mortgage rates fell today as lenders got caught up with the friendly move in the bond market that we noted yesterday. Incidentally, today's bond marke...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 3:47 PM
Only about one third of Americans told the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) in a recent survey that they thought it was a good time to buy a ho...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 10:27 AM
Residential construction performed an abrupt and unexpected about face in October. Permits, housing starts, and completions all improved on a month-ov...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 9:58 AM
Fed day tomorrow! We'll finally get to see what's what with respect to recent speculation and a factual shift in tone from several Fed members (inclu...
Tue, Dec 18 2018, 9:10 AM
“Rob, I’m no stranger to bribes.” (I am not going to say which mortgage banking production manager jokingly made that tongue-in-cheek statement.) We t...
Mon, Dec 17 2018, 5:46 PM
Just when you thought we might be done talking about "consolidations," there's that word again! I'd suggested on Friday that the modest bond market g...
Mon, Dec 17 2018, 4:55 PM
Mortgage rates were fairly flat yet again today. Unlike Friday, today's market movement made a case for a bit of a drop. "Market gains" mean different...
Mon, Dec 17 2018, 10:47 AM
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) is flirting with the danger zone. Although stressing that the ...
Mon, Dec 17 2018, 9:37 AM
More than anything else over the past 3 weeks, a shift in tone among Fed speakers has been at the heart of the year's best bond market rally. Seeming...
