Wed, May 15 2024, 8:21 AM
Lower interest rates gave a lift to refinancing activity for the second week but failed to do the same for those financing home purchases. The Mortgag...
Tue, May 14 2024, 4:45 PM
Bonds Ready to go Big in Either Direction
If you only had 1 day per month to allocate to watching the bond m...
Tue, May 14 2024, 4:31 PM
We've been waiting for tomorrow since April 10th. That's the last time the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was released. This is one of the two official ...
Tue, May 14 2024, 11:50 AM
Attendees are gearing up for the upcoming MBA Secondary Conference in Manhattan. Basketball fans know it as the home of Madison Square Garden and are ...
Tue, May 14 2024, 9:04 AM
The Producer Price Index (PPI) isn't in the same league as CPI when it comes to market movement potential, but as seen again this morning, it's no slo...
Mon, May 13 2024, 4:41 PM
What You See Today Won't Necessarily Be What You See Tomorrow
With essentially nothing on the event calendar...
Mon, May 13 2024, 4:24 PM
Last Thursday, mortgage rates merely had to hold steady in order to hit 1-month lows. In other words, Wednesday's rates were low enough to earn that ...
Mon, May 13 2024, 11:41 AM
Ahead of the upcoming MBA conference in Manhattan, as a reminder, we have five senses. All of them are important, with perhaps smell being the most un...
Mon, May 13 2024, 11:17 AM
In 2023 and especially 2024, the first bullet point in the bond market's job description is to focus on Core CPI above all other economic reports. In...
Fri, May 10 2024, 4:24 PM
In general, you should be skeptical any time someone says a future week will be more volatile. There's really no way to know such things in advance, b...
Fri, May 10 2024, 4:24 PM
Higher Inflation Expectations Keep Yields Range-Bound
It's not as if bond yields stood any real chance of br...
Fri, May 10 2024, 12:36 PM
The following should be prefaced with the reminder that it is impossible to predict the future with much precision when it comes to bond market moveme...
Fri, May 10 2024, 11:52 AM
On a flight yesterday I had a choice of movies and, knowing nothing about it, chose “The Beekeeper,” filled with severed fingers and broken glass bein...
Thu, May 9 2024, 4:45 PM
The most prevalently quoted conventional 30yr fixed rates are at the lowest levels in a month as of today, but there are a few "yeah buts" that make t...
Thu, May 9 2024, 4:43 PM
Bonds Boosted by Data and Well-Received Auction
Jobless Claims data doesn't normally move the market, but it...
Thu, May 9 2024, 11:09 AM
It is a starkly data-free week for all intents and purposes, but some economic reports are with us as always on a weekly basis. Thursday's initial jo...
Wed, May 8 2024, 4:47 PM
Yesterday, we took a look at the recent winning streak for mortgage rates. Specifically, they had moved lower for 5 straight days--a feat only achiev...
Wed, May 8 2024, 4:44 PM
Token Pull Back Keeps Things Boring
Coming into this week, we expected things to be boring and sideways afte...
Wed, May 8 2024, 11:41 AM
One of the notions surrounding the Treasury auction cycle is that the bond trading community tends to build in a "concession" ahead of any given aucti...
Wed, May 8 2024, 11:25 AM
After a very long travel day filled with odd, time-sucking delays, when I arrived in Birmingham I was happy to hear Alabama on the Uber car’s radio si...
Wed, May 8 2024, 8:16 AM
Lower interest rates allowed mortgage activity to rise modestly during the week ended May 3. It was the first increase in three weeks. The Mortgage Ba...
Tue, May 7 2024, 4:06 PM
Strong in The AM, Weaker in The PM
Bonds improved fairly steadily in the AM hours. After an initial glut of...
Tue, May 7 2024, 3:58 PM
There have been 3 winning streaks for mortgage rates in 2024 where the average rate has moved lower for at least 5 days and where the conventional 30y...
Tue, May 7 2024, 11:33 AM
Lynyrd Skynyrd sang, “Sweet home, Alabama, where the skies are so blue…” Through the wonders of airship transportation, today I’m off to Alabama. The ...
Tue, May 7 2024, 10:25 AM
The theme of "waiting" amid an empty calendar will be played out by the end of the week (if it's not already played out from most of the past year spe...
Mon, May 6 2024, 4:57 PM
Uneventful Start to What May be an Uneventful Week
Without any big ticket events or major news headlines, it...
Mon, May 6 2024, 4:16 PM
Mortgage rates did well last week, making it almost halfway back to the lower levels seen on April 9th. Why focus on April 9th? That was the last da...
Mon, May 6 2024, 11:43 AM
Think your job has its ups and downs… How’d you like to be a lipstick tester? (You should see the rest of him!) For me it is off to Birmingham tomorro...
Mon, May 6 2024, 11:09 AM
Last week was definitely important for the bond market. The key takeaway was the Fed's acknowledgement of elevated inflation in Q1 coupled with the a...
Fri, May 3 2024, 5:18 PM
Bonds Hold On to NFP-Driven Gains Despite Some Push-Back
Whether you view it as a perfectly logical reaction...
Fri, May 3 2024, 5:14 PM
It was an action-packed week for the housing and mortgage market. Wednesday's Fed announcement was the highlight, but we also got several economic rep...
Fri, May 3 2024, 12:46 PM
On most months in modern economic memory, a gain of 175k payrolls would be welcome news for the labor market. Depending on the context, it still is. ...
Fri, May 3 2024, 11:57 AM
When camping here at Yosemite National Park*, you quickly realize that there is one basic product here that has never changed: nature. Mortgage produc...
Thu, May 2 2024, 4:28 PM
The bond market--which dictates interest rates--had a generally favorable response to yesterday's update from the Federal Reserve. While the Fed didn...
Thu, May 2 2024, 4:26 PM
Counterintuitive Rally And Asymmetric Risk
Bonds began the day in slightly stronger territory and managed to...
Thu, May 2 2024, 12:20 PM
Thursday was always destined to be the least interesting day of current week due to its lack of meaningful calendar events, but that doesn't mean we c...
Thu, May 2 2024, 11:07 AM
Not all, but many, capital markets folks spent their college years rolling up their sleeves. Some not so much. When originators are asked about intere...
Wed, May 1 2024, 4:49 PM
Decent Data and Palatable Powell
Bonds managed modest to moderate gains after digesting all of the morning's...
Wed, May 1 2024, 4:08 PM
Wednesday brought a full schedule of events and data for the bond market to digest and bonds dictate day to day changes in mortgage rates. The mornin...
Wed, May 1 2024, 2:00 PM
Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding continued to expand at a solid pace. Job gains have remained strong, and the un...
Wed, May 1 2024, 11:49 AM
“I named my dog ‘5 Miles’ so I can tell people I walk 5 Miles every day.” This morning, I head to Yosemite National Park for some camping, hiking, and...
Wed, May 1 2024, 9:00 AM
Rising interest rates continue to constrain mortgage borrowing. The Mortgage Bankers Association says its Market Composite Index, a measure of loan ap...
Wed, May 1 2024, 8:57 AM
Bonds were roughly unchanged overnight, but began to improve modestly after the ADP data. Considering the numbers were higher than expected, that may...
Tue, Apr 30 2024, 4:39 PM
More Ammo For a Hawkish Fed, But Data is at Least as Important
Bonds began the day flat but lost ground quic...
Tue, Apr 30 2024, 3:47 PM
A mortgage rate is highly subjective and can vary for a variety of reasons. A news story that provides an outright level like 7.5% requires context a...
Tue, Apr 30 2024, 12:26 PM
Steering clear of unfriendly economic data has been an increasingly challenging task for the bond market in April. While it might be an overstatement...
Tue, Apr 30 2024, 12:24 PM
Home price increases continued to accelerate in February even as interest rates also moved higher. Both the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices and the...
Tue, Apr 30 2024, 11:45 AM
Don’t believe in climate change, rising sea levels, or cities sinking (“subsiding”)? Venice is sinking. So are Rotterdam, Bangkok, and New York (thoug...
Mon, Apr 29 2024, 4:02 PM
Decent Resilience in Spite of a Few Headwinds
Considering the volatility that may lie ahead, Monday ended up...
Mon, Apr 29 2024, 3:54 PM
Mortgage rates didn't change much at all over the weekend with the average lender still in the highest territory since November. The average conventi...
