Fri, Aug 18 2023, 10:51 AM
Like the crowd that cheers when their team scores late in a game that they have no hope of winning, it's hard not to feel some sense of relief or opti...
Fri, Aug 18 2023, 10:49 AM
As numbers approaching a thousand head to Orange County, CA, for the California MBA’s Western Secondary, keeping an eye on the remnants of a hurricane...
Thu, Aug 17 2023, 3:37 PM
Bonds Came Here to Chew Gum and Sell Off, And They're All Out of Gum
There comes a time in protracted bond m...
Thu, Aug 17 2023, 3:06 PM
Readers of financial news outside the mortgage industry are accustomed to getting their mortgage rate updates on a weekly basis. This has only recent...
Thu, Aug 17 2023, 1:36 PM
The GFC (great financial crisis) shaped and reshaped the worldview of any market-watcher that lived through it. The 70s/80s were increasingly seen as...
Thu, Aug 17 2023, 10:28 AM
Time flies, and we’re more than halfway through the 3rd quarter. Few lenders and vendors look forward to heading into the autumn or winter of any year...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 4:40 PM
If you could time travel back to October 20th, 2022, you'd find mortgage rates that are just a hair higher than today's at most lenders, but the diffe...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 4:28 PM
OK Rates... Explain Yourself!
Today's Fed Minutes were uneventful with a volume spike that didn't even eclip...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 12:35 PM
Not to be confused with an actual Fed Day Announcement, today's Fed Minutes simply offers a more detailed account of the meeting that took place 3 wee...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 10:00 AM
If I am not borrowing money, the impact of higher rates isn’t a big direct hit to my lifestyle or spending. But if I had a credit card from Kohl’s, pa...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 9:31 AM
Increased mortgage rates continued to damp down both purchase and refinance activity during the week ended August 11. The Mortgage Bankers Association...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 3:37 PM
Have you heard the one about higher mortgage rates? It's not a joke, sadly. It's just a thing that keeps happening. The week began with the average...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 3:34 PM
Paradoxical Data Reaction, But it Didn't Last
Yesterday we examined last week's paradoxical bond sell-off in...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 12:10 PM
One disclaimer is in order before anything else: Retail Sales data is not a consistent top tier market mover--especially in the past few years. Somet...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 11:44 AM
Rising rates took a toll on builder confidence in August. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market In...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 10:37 AM
Sorry the commentary is a little late this morning. I received an email from my IT department that I needed to change my username and password. It too...
Mon, Aug 14 2023, 3:16 PM
We've had to use words like "effectively" or "nearly" in the past few weeks to refer to mortgage rates' proximity to the highest levels since November...
Mon, Aug 14 2023, 3:15 PM
Rates Are Changing The Rules in The Middle of The Game
You know the part in the movie with the plot twist wh...
Mon, Aug 14 2023, 12:53 PM
This week and next week are two of the most affected by summertime trading conditions (lower volume, lighter liquidity, seemingly random directional m...
Mon, Aug 14 2023, 10:27 AM
For anyone attending the California MBA’s Western Secondary starting this weekend, here’s a challenge too good for any tennis players to pass up. Augi...
Fri, Aug 11 2023, 7:19 PM
This was supposed to be the week where a key inflation report would cast a vote on the fate of interest rate momentum. The vote was ostensibly friendl...
Fri, Aug 11 2023, 3:46 PM
Bonds Can't Catch a Break
This week was supposed to be all about CPI confirming or rejecting the notion that...
Fri, Aug 11 2023, 12:17 PM
The Producer Price Index (PPI) has a sub-par record as a market mover for bonds when compared to CPI and other inflation metrics. But markets have be...
Fri, Aug 11 2023, 10:22 AM
As the MMLA conference wraps up (congratulations to Dan Grzywacz, CMB, and nearly 40-year industry vet, who was this year’s James T. Barnes Award winn...
Thu, Aug 10 2023, 5:39 PM
OK, it may be a bit of stretch to consider today's jump a "surge" as it wasn't much bigger than some of the other increases seen in the past few weeks...
Thu, Aug 10 2023, 4:47 PM
Big Mystery Sell-Off, Not CPI or 30yr Auction or Fed Speakers
Today was CPI day and bonds lost a lot of grou...
Thu, Aug 10 2023, 11:06 AM
This is the catch when it comes to economic data with high potential to cause a big reaction in bonds: the key word is "potential." It takes a big be...
Thu, Aug 10 2023, 10:02 AM
A general discussion topic of those here at the MMLA conference in Michigan is the ups and downs we’re all facing. While mortgage applications drift d...
Wed, Aug 9 2023, 4:57 PM
Mortgage rates continued to move in a fairly narrow, sideways range on Wednesday--a trend that is very much in line with expectations from last Friday...
Wed, Aug 9 2023, 12:06 PM
Today is shaping up to be much less interesting than yesterday. Bonds didn't move nearly as much in the overnight session and began the day in roughl...
Wed, Aug 9 2023, 10:55 AM
“Once things were so tough for me, I worked at a cheap pizza shop to get by. I kneaded the dough.” Things are indeed tough out there. The other day I ...
Wed, Aug 9 2023, 8:11 AM
The downturn in mortgage application volume extended to a third straight week over the period ending August 4. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) ...
Tue, Aug 8 2023, 4:54 PM
Flash back to last Friday. The big jobs report came out and although it wasn't too far from forecasts, it was enough for the bond market to rally at ...
Tue, Aug 8 2023, 4:52 PM
MBS Underperform as Treasuries Benefit From Flight to Safety
When the market is sensitive to potential chang...
Tue, Aug 8 2023, 2:42 PM
A measure of the availability of mortgage credit dropped to its lowest level in a decade last month as lenders sought to reduce operating costs and ...
Tue, Aug 8 2023, 11:29 AM
Remember "global growth concerns?" That's the phrase that underpinned the rate reversal from long term highs in late 2018. It's definitely not reliv...
Tue, Aug 8 2023, 10:41 AM
Lending continues to be intertwined with legal and compliance issues. Here’s a story from overnight that is catching a lot of attention: “Equifax stoc...
Mon, Aug 7 2023, 4:08 PM
Uneventful Monday as Traders Keep Options Open
Bonds traders are keeping options open, both literally and fi...
Mon, Aug 7 2023, 3:21 PM
Mortgage rates are starting out the new week at modestly higher levels compared to last Friday afternoon. The average change is very small. Many bor...
Mon, Aug 7 2023, 10:42 AM
Bonds gave back a bit less than half of Friday's gains in the overnight session with most of the losses seen after the start of European trading. Tha...
Mon, Aug 7 2023, 10:39 AM
Jordan Peele met his famous comedy partner Keegan-Michael Key around 2002 at Second City in Chicago, and eventually performed this classic routine tha...
Fri, Aug 4 2023, 5:23 PM
In discussing mortgage rates near 23-year highs yesterday, we asked if there was any hope for relief and concluded that the only question was one of t...
Fri, Aug 4 2023, 5:15 PM
Tame Jobs Data Opens Door For Bonds to Stabilize
Rates were arguably oversold heading into today's jobs repo...
Fri, Aug 4 2023, 11:40 AM
Planet Home’s Michael B. reminds me, “I miss every shot I don’t take.” The topics here in Orlando at the FAMP convention include not only prospecting,...
Fri, Aug 4 2023, 10:07 AM
With rates pushing up to super long term highs by yesterday afternoon, it may not have taken too much of a miss in today's jobs data for bonds to rall...
Thu, Aug 3 2023, 4:19 PM
Interest rates of all types have been under immense pressure since the beginning of 2022. This resulted in the the highest mortgage rates in more tha...
Thu, Aug 3 2023, 4:02 PM
Snowball Sell-Off Ahead of Jobs Report
The bond market isn't necessarily expecting the jobs report to come i...
Thu, Aug 3 2023, 11:16 AM
There's something rotten in the state of the bond market. After the early July CPI-driven rally seemed to put a ceiling on the range, there have been...
Thu, Aug 3 2023, 10:50 AM
Mark Weber sends, “Can I take my 2.5 percent loan to another property? Remember the portable loan idea? When will we see real estate agents advertisin...
Wed, Aug 2 2023, 4:27 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher again today as the underlying bond market digested stronger economic data and details of the U.S. Treasury's increased bor...
