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 ...
Thu, Aug 24 2023, 10:51 AM
“I’m not a fan of elevator music. It’s bad on so many levels.” Whether or not you think that the environment and value of owning stock in lenders and ...
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, 2:52 PM
Sales of newly constructed homes appear to be benefitting from the very lack of inventory that is stifling existing home sales. July’s sales of pre-...
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...
Wed, Aug 23 2023, 11:02 AM
As the Western Secondary winds up, and weary capital markets staff & vendors head home from Orange County, perhaps humming “California Gurls,” working...
Wed, Aug 23 2023, 10:54 AM
Mortgage interest rates rose again last week, reaching the highest level in nearly a quarter century and further sidelining mortgage borrowers. The Mo...
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...
Tue, Aug 22 2023, 11:52 AM
Sales of existing homes slipped in July even as median prices sustained their record-high levels. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) said th...
Tue, Aug 22 2023, 9:59 AM
Phantom Planet sang, California here we come, right back where we started from.” Many here at the Western Secondary have spent their entire career in ...
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,...
Mon, Aug 21 2023, 10:59 AM
For those attending the Western Secondary, remember, it never rains in Southern California. Except for now. Here’s one person who won’t be seeing So C...
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...
Fri, Aug 18 2023, 10:49 AM
As numbers approaching a thousand head to Orange County, CA, for the California MBA’s Western Secondary, keeping an eye on the remnants of a hurricane...
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...
Thu, Aug 17 2023, 10:28 AM
Time flies, and we’re more than halfway through the 3rd quarter. Few lenders and vendors look forward to heading into the autumn or winter of any year...
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...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 10:00 AM
If I am not borrowing money, the impact of higher rates isn’t a big direct hit to my lifestyle or spending. But if I had a credit card from Kohl’s, pa...
Wed, Aug 16 2023, 9:31 AM
Increased mortgage rates continued to damp down both purchase and refinance activity during the week ended August 11. The Mortgage Bankers Association...
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...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 11:44 AM
Rising rates took a toll on builder confidence in August. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market In...
Tue, Aug 15 2023, 10:37 AM
Sorry the commentary is a little late this morning. I received an email from my IT department that I needed to change my username and password. It too...
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...
Mon, Aug 14 2023, 10:27 AM
For anyone attending the California MBA’s Western Secondary starting this weekend, here’s a challenge too good for any tennis players to pass up. Augi...
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...
Fri, Aug 11 2023, 10:22 AM
As the MMLA conference wraps up (congratulations to Dan Grzywacz, CMB, and nearly 40-year industry vet, who was this year’s James T. Barnes Award winn...
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...
Thu, Aug 10 2023, 10:02 AM
A general discussion topic of those here at the MMLA conference in Michigan is the ups and downs we’re all facing. While mortgage applications drift d...
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...
Wed, Aug 9 2023, 10:55 AM
“Once things were so tough for me, I worked at a cheap pizza shop to get by. I kneaded the dough.” Things are indeed tough out there. The other day I ...
