A vast majority of long-time bond watchers share the same general understanding of how war impacts rates. Specifically, the increased global economic ...
For many, business is slow out there, and the industry waits for the House vote on the abusive trigger lead bill. Depository banks continue to focus o...
The latest Residential Construction report from the Census Bureau showed a noticeable drop in overall housing starts in May, though single-family acti...
Mortgage application activity declined modestly last week despite a drop in rates, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest survey...
Builder sentiment declined for the second straight month according to the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo's latest Housing...
With Thursday being a federal holiday, banks (and more importantly, the underlying market for mortgage related bonds) were closed. This means that le...
Much like the Friday after Thanksgiving, we have to wonder what the point is of a trading session without any neighbors (there's actually some guiding...
Happy Summer Solstice, and happy 50th birthday to the movie Jaws. Back then, for security, all we had to remember was where we hid our house key, or t...
It happens, but it's rare. A Fed "dot plot" day has come and gone with mortgage rates almost perfectly unchanged from the previous day. This speaks to...
Although swings in net exports have affected the data, recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. The u...
Today we hear from the U.S. Federal Reserve. We can expect no change to overnight fed funds. As pointed yesterday by Dr. Paul Brewbaker, the economist...
Fed day is here and there's a 0% chance of a rate cut. That's been the case for just over a month due a combination of April's jobs report and the st...
Mortgage rates continue operating in a narrow range with almost every day of the past two months falling between 6.8 and 7.0% for a top tier 30yr fixe...
Bonds were decently stronger in the overnight session, but not for any new, specific reasons. Trading levels have been cutting an increasingly narrow...
In Spain, Spaniards are shooting water pistols at foreigners to protest the impact of mass tourism: it has created a housing crunch. Tourism in the Un...
While there's been no shortage of political and geopolitical headlines over the past 2 business days, there hasn't been much by way of inspiration for...
Any food science major will tell you that the difference between jelly and jam is that jam has chunks of fruit in it; jelly is strained. There is also...
After rallying fairly well last Wednesday and Thursday, bonds pulled back on Friday, but not enough to erase more than half of the week's gains. The n...
The top tier 30yr fixed mortgage rate index rose 0.04% on Friday, which would be a medium-sized defeat in and of itself. In the broader context, howev...
After a Memorial Day-induced lull, mortgage application activity rebounded sharply last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) la...
Hey, for you LOs who think things are slow, you can always go into golf. The best example of this is ex-LO Ben Griffin who has racked up $11 million i...
By 8pm last night, news of Israel's attack on Iran erased an entire week of stock market gains and pushed bond yields to the lowest levels in more tha...
Mortgage rates being offered today are only a hair lower for the average lender than they were on June 4th, but June 4th was the best day since early ...
“I was always a home builder, but lately I’ve developed an apartment complex.” Here in Florida, so many structures are made of stucco because stucco i...
This morning's PPI did its best impression of yesterday's CPI with the core monthly number coming in at 0.1 vs 0.3 forecast. In yesterday's case, this...
After a calm start to the week on Monday and Tuesday, we were likely to see a bit more volatility on Wednesday due to important events on the calendar...
Here in Tampa, I was walking through the hotel bar last night when I overheard someone say, “Age 60 might be the new 40, but 9:00 PM is the new midnig...
Heading into today's CPI data, our stance was that we'd need to see the monthly core number come in at 0.1 vs 0.3 in order to see much of a friendly r...
It was a fairly boring day on what has turned out to be a fairly boring week so far for mortgage rates. After Friday's larger spike, we've seen a mic...
Although bonds are experiencing a small amount of volatility this morning, it isn't consequential in the bigger picture. Quick-but-modest weakness at...
“Why is Ireland so expensive? House prices are always Dublin'.” Those days are temporarily over in the United States, and the pendulum is quickly swin...
As hoped, Friday's big rate spike did not carry additional momentum into the new week. This is occasionally a risk when rates are responding to big s...
For the next several days I am in Florida, in mortgage meetings and the MBAF, and in Saturday’s Commentary I noted the intense flurry of conference ac...
Overnight and early-session trading confirm the bond market is shifting gears and re-entering a sort of cruise control in the prevailing range. Had la...
Mortgage rates have enjoyed a nice run since May 21st, with the MND Index (average top tier 30yr fixed scenarios) falling from a recent peak of 7.08% ...
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest survey showed a pullback in mortgage applications, with rates dipping slightly after a three-week clim...
The bond market was likely taking a bit of a lead-off ahead of today's jobs report, inspired by a string of weaker economic data over the past week. ...
Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day. “My granddad was responsible for 25 downed German planes in WW II. To this day, he is still known as the worst...
Best Closing Levels in More Than a Month
Don't look now, but rates just inched their way down to the best levels since the first week of May. It's probably NOT fair to credit geopolitical developments f...