Fri, Jul 21 2017, 6:09 PM
As expected, today could be better characterized as a highly-regulated narcotic sleep aid than an interesting trading day for bond markets. The dream...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 5:14 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower today, setting yet another new low for the month of July. For the past 2 weeks, rates have been pushing back against a fair...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 11:29 AM
It remains to be seen if it passes into law, or how it will hold up during the process, but housing industry groups say an agreement has been hammered...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 9:34 AM
Under the heading, “What’ll they think of next?”, especially for aging Boomers, comes stairs that store energy and help the next person walk up them! ...
Fri, Jul 21 2017, 9:29 AM
One of the hallmarks of classic (read: old school) technical analysis is the role of volume in confirming market movements. For instance, if 10yr y...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 7:06 PM
Talk about your anticlimactic conclusions! It's not that the European Central Bank (ECB) was likely to make any meaningful changes in its policy stan...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 5:59 PM
Mortgage rates held relatively steady today, keeping them in line with the lowest levels in more than 3 weeks. There was relatively little market move...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 3:39 PM
The single agency security toward which the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), have been...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:34 AM
This morning we’ve had the usual Thursday initial jobless claims economic release. At the other end of the teeter totter, here’s an amazing stat to ta...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:28 AM
Refinancing held its ground in June, with that share of the mortgage market remaining at 32 percent. While that is a significant decline from the 47 p...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 9:15 AM
Black Knight Financial Services said on Thursday that continued low interest rates fostered another increase in prepayments . The national prepayment ...
Thu, Jul 20 2017, 8:33 AM
Mario Draghi is the President of the European Central Bank (ECB). That's the EU's version of the Fed. Like the Fed in the past, the ECB is still ad...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 5:56 PM
Much has been made of tomorrow's European Central Bank (ECB) Announcement, mainly because of its proximity to ECB President Draghi's comments on June ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 4:56 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower today, despite slightly weaker underlying bond markets. This has been an ongoing phenomenon in recent days. Bonds improve, ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:50 AM
In a broad generalization, when people have money to invest they usually think about stocks, bonds, or real estate. (Yes, I know there are other asset...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:48 AM
Housing permits and starts both reversed their respective two-month slides in June, and both did so convincingly , far outpacing analysts' expectation...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 9:41 AM
This commentary will begin it's life as the "day ahead" entry for July 19th, 2017, but it may as well be a "knowledge base" entry for the validity of ...
Wed, Jul 19 2017, 8:24 AM
Mortgage application volume bounced back during the week ended July 14, following a sharp downturn a week earlier. That week had been shortened by the...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 4:45 PM
If there is one thematic event at the heart of the past 4 weeks, it was a series of comments from European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi b...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 3:45 PM
Mortgage rates fell today, but continue lagging behind the movements seen in underlying bond markets. Part of that has to do with the timing of bond m...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 11:43 AM
Our neighbors to the north seem to think the grass is pretty green on this side of the fence. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) says that fo...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 10:38 AM
Home builder confidence continues backing down from its post-crisis peak earlier this year, although the National Association of Realtors (NAHB) calls...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 10:28 AM
How much would you pay to keep your job, or find a new one? Political analysts forecast that two wealthy contenders for the 2018 Illinois governor spo...
Tue, Jul 18 2017, 9:12 AM
It remains the case that Thursday is the focal point of the week, with European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi set to tell reporters how fa...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 4:59 PM
Mortgage rates are largely dictated by movements in bond markets--specifically mortgage-backed securities (MBS). When bonds improve, prices rise and i...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 4:57 PM
Today was an exceptionally light day in terms of news, volume, participation, and everything else we normally care about when it comes to market mov...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 1:02 PM
Applications for mortgages to purchase newly constructed homes posted what was termed a seasonal decline in June. The Mortgage Bankers Association sai...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 1:01 PM
Fannie Mae said it is sticking with its forecast for 2.0 percent economic growth in 2017, a projection it first made in February. The estimate of 2.1 ...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 9:22 AM
There’s plenty of talk about real estate agents, appraisers, and loan officers being replaced by artificial intelligence or robots. In legal news, JPM...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 9:18 AM
It's the middle of summertime, the middle of a month, and there's a light economic and event calendar in the US. These are prime conditions for tra...
Mon, Jul 17 2017, 8:42 AM
The excitement of buying a new home has worn off fast for almost half of Americans. Forty-four percent of homeowners have some regrets about their cur...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 4:58 PM
Today was bittersweet for bond markets, with strong gains in the morning, and an almost complete reversal by the end of the day. As expected, the e...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 4:03 PM
Mortgage rates are experiencing increased volatility at the end of this week, which was to-be-expected given the calendar of events and economic data....
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 3:47 PM
Community banks and credit unions may soon be subject to new guidelines that will require them to report information on home equity lines of credit, d...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 10:12 AM
Credit availability appeared to have improved slightly in June as three of the four components in the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA's) Mortgage ...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 9:33 AM
Redfin, the Seattle-based real estate company, says that the drought in listings that has affected the inventory of homes for sale marked its 21 st mo...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 9:16 AM
Today are Q2 earnings numbers from JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and PNC – a look at the mortgage numbers in Monday’s commentary. What may be of m...
Fri, Jul 14 2017, 8:59 AM
Today begins with weaker economic data helping bonds move into stronger territory. Investors had been eagerly awaiting the Retail Sales and CPI data ...
Thu, Jul 13 2017, 6:17 PM
Take market analysis with a grain of salt today. To a much greater extent than yesterday, market-watchers would have to dig to connect the dots bet...
Thu, Jul 13 2017, 5:45 PM
Mortgage rates had their first great day in several weeks yesterday, but ended up giving back some of those gains today. Bond markets that underlie in...
Thu, Jul 13 2017, 12:39 PM
Unlike many other countries, America has a consumer-driven economy. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), in a couple of recent entries in...
Thu, Jul 13 2017, 9:27 AM
As Abraham Lincoln said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” But I turned to the internet to find out how many languages there are in...
Thu, Jul 13 2017, 8:56 AM
For the entire first quarter of 2017, bonds held inside a range from roughly 2.30 to 2.60 in terms of 10yr yields. This was the purgatory we occupi...
Wed, Jul 12 2017, 5:20 PM
" Support " and " resistance " are two terms often thrown around in market analysis. They loosely refer to ceilings and floors respectively (as far a...
Wed, Jul 12 2017, 4:26 PM
Mortgage rates had been holding in a narrow range near their highest levels in roughly 3 months over the past few days. Despite some stability in unde...
Wed, Jul 12 2017, 12:05 PM
Time heals all wounds as the old saying goes, and the decade that has passed since the housing crisis seems to have allowed many Americans to recover ...
Wed, Jul 12 2017, 9:28 AM
Millions of parents around the nation will be sending their ex-high school seniors off to college this autumn. And what better thing to teach them is ...
Wed, Jul 12 2017, 9:02 AM
Americans were apparently more interested in picnics and fireworks last week than in buying or refinancing their homes. At least that's what we might ...
Wed, Jul 12 2017, 9:01 AM
Global bond markets have been on the run since June 27th , when Mario Draghi (head of the European Central Bank, or ECB) said deflation was being rep...
Tue, Jul 11 2017, 4:41 PM
Quite simply, markets are waiting for the last 3 days of this week before gleaning any "takeaways" about the current state of financial markets, the e...
