Wed, Feb 17 2016, 8:38 AM
Technical analysis refers to attempts to understand and predict financial market behavior based solely on financial markets themselves. Specifically,...
Wed, Feb 17 2016, 5:47 PM
Bond markets began the overnight session in fine shape, but soon succumbed to a steamroller of equity market positivity in the European session. Ri...
Wed, Feb 17 2016, 4:44 PM
Mortgage rates were just a bit higher in most cases today, although some lenders were effectively unchanged from yesterday. If you happened to stop...
Tue, Feb 16 2016, 10:54 AM
Confidence among new home builders cooled considerably this month. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said its Housing Market Index (HM...
Tue, Feb 16 2016, 10:52 AM
The mortgage industry has certainly taken its lumps in the last eight years. Things are turning around, and Jason Frazier from California's Mason McDu...
Tue, Feb 16 2016, 8:15 AM
The new, holiday-shortened week begins in much the same fashion as the previous week ended: with bond markets considering whether they are under press...
Tue, Feb 16 2016, 5:23 PM
When you have a day as weak as last Friday was, the most informative subsequent trading session is one that is either similarly weak or strongly posit...
Tue, Feb 16 2016, 3:59 PM
Mortgage rates continued slightly higher today, further distancing themselves from last week's 1-yr lows. The average lender continues to quote c...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 11:44 AM
A proposed new rule from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), if enacted, could significantly impact mortgage workers' paychecks, and affect mortgage c...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 11:37 AM
In a hearing on Thursday before the House
Financial Services Committee, Edward L. Golding,
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 11:30 AM
(Note: Monday is a federal holiday , and there will be no commentary.) Here's a note I received from the owner of an independent mortgage bank with a...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 9:43 AM
As we all know, the MBS market is personified by a big green dragon . So far in 2016, the dragon has been breathing plenty of fire. Less publicize...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 4:10 PM
Day's like today can't hep but give the average market watcher a bit of a sinking feeling . Was that it? Was yesterday's visit to the lowest yields...
Fri, Feb 12 2016, 3:47 PM
Mortgage rates rose rapidly today, relative to their average intraday movement potential. Things have been far from average, of course, and so it ...
Thu, Feb 11 2016, 9:39 AM
What's this? Fifty five thousand residents in one mile-high building? Doesn't Tokyo have earthquakes? Let's hope not everyone wants hot water at the...
Thu, Feb 11 2016, 7:34 AM
Stocks and bond yields ignited a fiery romance in 2016, not letting each other out of sight for almost the entire month of January. That is to say,...
Thu, Feb 11 2016, 6:57 PM
The
Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) early estimate of new home sales for
January projects a 14 percent increase compared to December. MBA ...
Thu, Feb 11 2016, 6:56 PM
Bond markets came thundering in to the domestic trading session today, largely following equally thunderous moves in equities and European stock/bon...
Thu, Feb 11 2016, 5:22 PM
Mortgage rates were widely available at 3.5 percent for much of the day today. At any other time from the middle of 2013 through the end of 2015, ...
Wed, Feb 10 2016, 9:57 AM
Average mortgage rates declined during the week ended February 5, in at least one case to the lowest level in nearly three years. In response there w...
Wed, Feb 10 2016, 7:34 AM
Who has the mic? Who's wielding the pen? Whose opinion are you digesting as you build your sense of what "they" think is going to happen? If you're...
Wed, Feb 10 2016, 5:28 PM
Mortgage rates barely budged today, but did manage to gain just a bit of ground. That means another 1-year low, technically, although many lenders...
Wed, Feb 10 2016, 5:17 PM
To be fair to Fed Chair Yellen, it was too much to ask of her to concoct some secret combination of words that would magically help stem the tide of r...
Wed, Feb 10 2016, 3:18 PM
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said on Tuesday that its proposed budget for Fiscal 2017 will include $48.9 billion in gross d...
Tue, Feb 9 2016, 10:52 AM
The number of properties in the process of foreclosure nationwide dropped by nearly a quarter from the end of 2014 to the end of this past year. Co...
Tue, Feb 9 2016, 10:44 AM
"Have you heard the latest statistics joke? Probably." CNN reports the latest data from the IRS finds the top 10% of Americans make $128,000 in min...
Tue, Feb 9 2016, 7:34 AM
"It's the middle of the night on February 8-9th 2016, and 10yr yields are trading in the mid 1's."
That's not a phrase many people thought they'd ...
Tue, Feb 9 2016, 4:57 PM
Stock prices and bond yields closed at their lowest levels in more than a year yesterday. Today was largely spent consolidating that move. With Ch...
Tue, Feb 9 2016, 4:13 PM
Mortgage rates kept moving lower today as global financial markets remain in distress. This time around, the improvement wasn't as much about the b...
Mon, Feb 8 2016, 10:55 AM
Affordability is becoming an issue based on more than just rising
interest rates and rising home prices according to the latest Home Purchase
Sentim...
Mon, Feb 8 2016, 10:42 AM
I asked my cat Myrtle (is she my mews?) if she knew anything about cybersecurity. She gave me a look that told me she spends as much time worrying abo...
Mon, Feb 8 2016, 7:34 AM
Depending on your point of view, this could end up being the most interesting week of the year for bond markets. If that turns out to be the case, ...
Mon, Feb 8 2016, 5:43 PM
Forget oil--mostly. There's a new bad boy in town over the weekend, and he's making just the sort of mess that Treasuries and MBS like to see. To ...
Mon, Feb 8 2016, 5:08 PM
Mortgage rates dropped significantly today, officially hitting the lowest levels in almost exactly 1 year. For most lenders, that means a conventio...
Fri, Feb 5 2016, 8:25 AM
First thing's first: NFP always reserves the right to move markets, even on occasions when it arguably shouldn't matter. Over the years, so many trad...
Fri, Feb 5 2016, 5:54 PM
Markets were confused by today's jobs data--at least bond markets were. The 151k vs 190k miss on headline NFP was ostensibly offset by the improvem...
Fri, Feb 5 2016, 4:49 PM
Mortgage rates were mostly unchanged today, though a few lenders were microscopically higher in cost . That's an uncommon result for the day of th...
Fri, Feb 5 2016, 2:39 PM
Credit available was apparently slightly lower in January
than in February, the third straight month that the Mortgage Bankers
Associations' (MBA'...
Fri, Feb 5 2016, 1:32 PM
"How much does it cost to buy sixty female pigs and forty male deer? One hundred sows and bucks!" Money? I continue to be amazed at this stat: last y...
Thu, Feb 4 2016, 12:22 PM
The percentage of total home sales transactions that are
completed in cash continues to decline on an annual basis as distressed homes
become less a...
Thu, Feb 4 2016, 10:02 AM
Lenders
should know that the FDIC indicates it expects banks to evaluate and
manage cyber risk as it does any other business risk and to do so a...
Thu, Feb 4 2016, 8:20 AM
It used to be that the first Thursday of every month provided a fairly reliable chance of volatility . That was during the days when Europe was an e...
Thu, Feb 4 2016, 5:18 PM
Today was a so-called "inside day" for bond markets, meaning prices and yields remained INSIDE yesterday's range of prices and yields. Economic dat...
Thu, Feb 4 2016, 4:35 PM
Mortgage rates held their ground at 8-month lows today. This time around, it was far less eventful than yesterday's session, which saw lenders chan...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 9:08 AM
I
spent some time at the Texas Mortgage Banker's event earlier this week
in Houston, and some of the discussion revolved around another refi
bo...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 8:29 AM
Mortgage application volume during the week ended January 29 was again either
disappointing or much improved depending on whether one viewed it on ...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 7:34 AM
Yesterday's morning notes laid out an ominous technical comparison to last January and we promptly proceeded to have the best rally of the year. Ther...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 6:24 PM
Freddie Mac's economists are expressing concerns about what
they see as economic headwinds revealed by some recently released
indicators. In thei...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 6:19 PM
Two days ago, we were able to refer to Monday as the best day of the year, as long as you forget about the Friday before it. Today is the new 'best ...
Wed, Feb 3 2016, 4:54 PM
Mortgage rates had a far more tumultuous day despite ultimately hanging on to the lowest levels in more than 8 months. Whether you wanted to be h...
