Friday brought the release of the big jobs report which is historically more likely than any other monthly economic report to cause the biggest pops o...
“The San Diego Padres visited an orphanage in Mexico. ‘It's really sad to see their faces with no hope,’ said Juan, age 9.” In other San Diego news, O...
As always, the jobs report matters. Today, we're seeing an obvious reaction to a fairly minimal miss (143k vs 170k f'cast in the headline job count). ...
Yesterday was notable for being the first day in more than a week to offer any excitement for rates. More notably, that excitement was the good kind....
“Nothing says, ‘I mean business’ than using a shopping cart at the liquor store.” We’re already 10 percent through with 2025, and residential lenders ...
Coming off yesterday's solid rally, the bond market underwent a modest correction in the overnight session. Most of the gains remain intact, but the ...
There are two main styles of measurement when it comes to keeping track of mortgage rates: daily and weekly. Sometimes, the differences in methodolog...
The recent absence of volatility in day-to-day mortgage rate movement has been an easy target for light-hearted indignation among market watchers. Bu...
To say the very least, there are more moving pieces to consider at the moment when it comes to the narrative guiding volatility and momentum in the bo...
I know where to go when this Commentary writing gig grows stale. Wanna make 30 clams an hour? Costco’s hiring! (Remember when lenders and originators ...
If you like your mortgage rate movement boring and minimal, this week's for you (and last week, and the week before that). Going all the way back to ...
How’s your ability to predict the weather? Apparently not good if you’re a groundhog. It is not hard to predict how you’ll hear from the IRS, if you d...
Bonds initially drifted into slightly weaker territory in the overnight session, but began bouncing back just after 9am ET. All this in spite of a qu...
We know that mortgage rates are driven by financial markets and we know that financial markets have experienced volatility amid the roll-out of new ta...
Where should we begin this week? There’s President Trump making good on one of his campaign promises over the weekend, and it wasn’t ending Russia’s a...
As we discussed heading into the weekend (and the likely official tariff announcement), the only recent, conclusive track record the market has for ta...
For all of the news that seems to be highly likely to cause volatility for rates, the market reaction ended up playing out on a very small scale. The ...
This morning's PCE inflation data was in line with expectations with the annual core PCE price index coming in at 2.8% and the monthly core coming in ...
Here in Las Vegas, I asked a German girl if Germans are afraid of numbers. She said 9. Numbers are interesting, as we will find out with the declared ...
Interest rates are driven by the bond market and bonds are at their best levels in over a month. As such, it's no surprise that mortgage rates are abl...
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) for December this morning. Pending sales measures the number ...
Bonds rallied in overnight trading. The move was exceptionally linear, without any obvious regard for movement in equities or European bonds. Yields w...
Any capital markets person will tell you, “What’s a surefire way to double your money in a casino? Fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.” I ...
Heading into today's Fed announcement, we didn't expect to receive any significant surprise on the stance of monetary policy. Financial markets had l...
“Did you ever notice that when you put the two words "The" and "IRS" together, it spells "Theirs"? The impact of taxes and tax cuts (potential or expi...
What follows is a comparison between today's newly released Fed announcement and the previous announcement. Additions are blue/underlined. Subtractio...
Bonds began the day in slightly stronger territory but have pulled back as we head into the noon hour. If we put today's movement under a microscope,...
The average mortgage lender remained right in line with yesterday's levels despite a bit of weakness in the bond market. Lenders who improved their r...
Both S&P Case-Shiller and the FHFA released national home price indices this morning. In both cases, November's prices were slightly higher than expec...
“Last year I joined a support group for procrastinators. We haven't met yet.” Lenders and vendors are certainly meeting here in Austin. What’s going o...
Bonds were weaker overnight as markets calmed down a bit after yesterday's DeepSeek frenzy. The 8:20am CME open brought in just a bit of buying, but ...
There are two distinct patterns of behavior when it comes to rates interacting with stocks. The first could be called the "conventional wisdom" patte...
“Dr. Oz says rubbing coffee grounds on your naked body will get rid of cellulite. Apparently, you can't do this in the downtown Austin Starbucks.” Her...
NVDA has obviously been THE biggest driver of prevailing bull market in stocks. In 2024, its market cap increased by just over 2 trillion dollars. Fol...
While there were only 4 business days instead of the customary 5, it's been an intensely boring week for mortgage rates. Tuesday started out right wh...
It's no mystery that 2024 hasn't been a stellar year for home sales and many other housing metrics. Today's release of December's Existing Home Sales ...
The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) weekly mortgage application survey showed a modest decrease in refinance applications and an even more modest...
Due to the incredibly light calendar of economic data this week, this morning's combination of S&P PMI and Consumer Sentiment added up to the most con...
“With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rate...
Minimal Selling Leaves Focus on CPI
The first order of business this morning was to reconcile the weaker NFP reading with the seemingly illogical bond market sell-off. That was easy enough to do by the ...