Fri, Aug 25 2023, 1:13 PM
With the mortgage industry in the throes of its worst era since the GFC (Great Financial Crisis), comparisons are inevitable. If you didn't live thr...
Thu, Aug 24 2023, 4:19 PM
Wednesday proved to be one of the 3 best days for mortgage rates in months. The catch? Those "great" days are most likely to be seen in the wake of a...
Thu, Aug 24 2023, 4:16 PM
Bonds Opt to Avoid Exuberance Ahead of Powell
After Wednesday's big rally ended with bonds near their best l...
Thu, Aug 24 2023, 11:55 AM
With the morning economic data having come and gone with little fanfare, the most significant role today can fill is as a placeholder. It offers the ...
Wed, Aug 23 2023, 5:00 PM
Mortgage rates dropped at the fastest pace in weeks today, but that isn't saying much in and of itself considering rates have only moved lower 3 times...
Wed, Aug 23 2023, 4:51 PM
Snowball Rally, But Does it Change Anything?
After more than 2 weeks of relentless selling that took yields ...
Wed, Aug 23 2023, 11:35 AM
Any time bonds are as oversold as they were yesterday, there's a better chance of a bigger corrective rally when a reason to rally finally presents it...
Tue, Aug 22 2023, 4:43 PM
When it seems that we've only known pain in the mortgage rate world recently, the absence of pain is a welcome relief. Such was the case today with t...
Tue, Aug 22 2023, 4:36 PM
Absence of Additional Weakness
Today's trading session doesn't really qualify as a strong one for the bond m...
Tue, Aug 22 2023, 12:33 PM
Recall the title of last Friday's recap: "This is How They Get Ya." There is no "they," and no one is really trying to deceive you. Rather, the inte...
Mon, Aug 21 2023, 3:42 PM
Interest rates are based on trading levels in the bond market. Bond traders began their day looking at significantly weaker levels (i.e. higher yield...
Mon, Aug 21 2023, 3:25 PM
Another Day in The New, Higher Rate Reality
"Higher for longer," they said. And they weren't kidding. Afte...
Mon, Aug 21 2023, 12:13 PM
The new week begins with bond yields at the highest levels since 2007 in what has been a broadly linear uptrend since late July. Up until that point,...
Fri, Aug 18 2023, 4:49 PM
This is How They Get Ya
Bonds ended up rallying a bit to close out the week, sorta. 10yr yields were 3bps l...
Fri, Aug 18 2023, 4:28 PM
At this point "high rates" are old news. We were already close to hitting the highest levels in more than 20 years last week, so it wasn't a huge surp...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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, 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...
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...
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, 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...
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...
Wed, Aug 2 2023, 3:47 PM
Yields Briefly Hit 8 Month Highs
Bond yields spiked to their highest levels in more than 8 months this morni...
