Fri, Nov 22 2024, 4:26 PM
Getting Back to Normal, For a Few Days Anyway
After a decidedly abnormal 6 weeks beginning in early October,...
Fri, Nov 22 2024, 3:01 PM
Starting in early October, mortgage rates experienced significant volatility, meaning the average day over day change was much bigger than normal. Wh...
Fri, Nov 22 2024, 12:03 PM
The bond market has been forced to take the victories that are within reach. As November winds down, the best victory we could have hoped for was the...
Thu, Nov 21 2024, 4:52 PM
Another Flat Day, This Time With Data
While it would be an overstatement to say that bonds have fully outgro...
Thu, Nov 21 2024, 4:26 PM
They may not be low. In fact, they may still be a lot higher than you want, but at least they haven't been too volatility this week. For the 7th day...
Thu, Nov 21 2024, 12:13 PM
It's been a bit of a chaotic morning so far, but in a narrow enough range to make it relatively boring in the bigger picture. Bonds began the day in ...
Wed, Nov 20 2024, 4:22 PM
Remember October and the first part of November--not because of the election, but rather because of the relentless rise in mortgage rates? Would you ...
Wed, Nov 20 2024, 10:34 AM
There has been plenty of news over the past 48 hours regarding the U.S. greenlighting Ukraine to use long range missiles to attack Russia. Yesterday'...
Tue, Nov 19 2024, 4:59 PM
Bonds Give Back Most of The Overnight Gains
Stocks and bonds had a logical response to the threat of global ...
Tue, Nov 19 2024, 4:27 PM
Ask your favorite curmudgeonly old market watcher and they'll be happy to explain what "always" happens in financial markets when there's breaking new...
Tue, Nov 19 2024, 10:31 AM
Tuesday brings a classic example of a seemingly significant geopolitical headline resulting in a completely underwhelming bond market reaction. When ...
Mon, Nov 18 2024, 4:33 PM
Still Waiting For an End to Unfriendly Trend
It was an uneventful Monday for the bond market. Economic data...
Mon, Nov 18 2024, 4:01 PM
The average top tier conventional 30yr fixed rate was just a hair over 7% on Friday afternoon and the same is true at the start of the new week. Rate...
Mon, Nov 18 2024, 11:10 AM
While financial news outlets continue focusing on politics and Trump's cabinet picks, the bond market is expressing anxiety about the risk that econom...
Fri, Nov 15 2024, 3:41 PM
Uneventful Conclusion to Another Volatile Week
This morning began like many other recent mornings with econo...
Fri, Nov 15 2024, 2:54 PM
This afternoon's mortgage rates are higher than yesterday's latest levels. That's a result of bond market weakness seen late yesterday and earlier th...
Fri, Nov 15 2024, 9:28 AM
All 3 of this morning's 8:30am economic reports were stronger than expected, and the 9:15am report was right in line with expectations. Of these, Ret...
Thu, Nov 14 2024, 4:34 PM
Powell Rains on Bond Market's Mini Parade
Today is a bit of a mirror image compared to yesterday. Bonds los...
Thu, Nov 14 2024, 4:15 PM
Losses... weakness... selling pressure... When any of these things happen in the bond market, it puts upward pressure on interest rates. Mortgage ra...
Thu, Nov 14 2024, 10:01 AM
The morning has been both straightforward and interesting. The straightforward part involved a moderate sell-off following stronger economic data. J...
Wed, Nov 13 2024, 3:28 PM
While there's been plenty of movement in the average mortgage rate on any given day recently, today was not one of them. 30yr fixed rates remained ab...
Wed, Nov 13 2024, 10:20 AM
Bonds managed a moderate rally in response to this morning's inflation data. While it has since been mostly erased, it was as strong of a showing as ...
Tue, Nov 12 2024, 4:35 PM
Back to Regularly Scheduled Programming (Unfortunately)
Bonds sold off on Tuesday both during the domestic s...
Tue, Nov 12 2024, 3:35 PM
Last Thursday and Friday offered some hope that the persistent move to higher rates was finally leveling off. It wasn't necessarily a rational hope, ...
Tue, Nov 12 2024, 9:24 AM
In the run up to the election, we offered constant reminders that a 10bp move in Treasuries wasn't really a big deal, and that such volatility could b...
Fri, Nov 8 2024, 6:14 PM
Back to Uneventful Already?
MBS are ending the trading day at almost perfectly unchanged levels--not the sor...
Fri, Nov 8 2024, 5:22 PM
The bond market dictates day to day movement for all manner of interest rates, including mortgages. On election night, bond yields (another word for ...
Fri, Nov 8 2024, 11:41 AM
"Buy the rumor, sell the news" is an age-old aphorism in financial markets for a reason. It accurately speaks to the real and repeatable phenomenon w...
Thu, Nov 7 2024, 5:12 PM
Breaking Down The Big Non-Fed-Related Rally
As intraday charts give way to daily charts in the coming weeks,...
Thu, Nov 7 2024, 4:33 PM
There's a distinct risk that, even in the financial community, that people will look back on today's drop in interest rates and conclude it must have ...
Thu, Nov 7 2024, 2:00 PM
Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. Job gains Since earlier in the year, labor market conditio...
Thu, Nov 7 2024, 12:27 PM
This morning's only relevant economic data was weekly jobless claims. The headline was right in line with forecasts and the non-adjusted number keeps...
Wed, Nov 6 2024, 5:29 PM
Does The Fed Still Matter?
Bonds sold off overnight as the reality of Trump's victory became apparent. Trad...
Wed, Nov 6 2024, 3:03 PM
Mortgage rates spent the entire month of October moving higher at a fairly quick pace. Some of that had to do with stronger economic data, but at lea...
Wed, Nov 6 2024, 9:45 AM
Heading into the election, we knew the bond market was losing ground in concert with improving odds of a Trump victory and red sweep. After being sur...
Tue, Nov 5 2024, 4:54 PM
Bonds Brace For Election Results
It was an interesting round trip for the bond market today as overnight wea...
Tue, Nov 5 2024, 4:00 PM
More often than not, mortgage lenders only set rates once a day. Their decisions are based on trading levels in the underlying bond market. Even thou...
Tue, Nov 5 2024, 11:08 AM
Last week could easily have left us with the impression that the bond market's love affair with economic data was put on hold until after the election...
Mon, Nov 4 2024, 4:13 PM
Election Remains Dominant Source of Volatility
While the average day of the past few weeks has involved elec...
Mon, Nov 4 2024, 3:16 PM
Love it or hate it, election-related volatility has been having a big impact on the bond market and, thus, mortgage rates. Most of the volatility has...
Mon, Nov 4 2024, 10:08 AM
Up until last Friday, 10yr Treasury yields had consistently closed at 4.27-4.28 last week. Now this morning, we're at 4.27-4.28 again. That's the sh...
Fri, Nov 1 2024, 5:07 PM
Why Bonds Tanked Despite Super Low NFP
Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) came in at 12k versus a median forecast of 113...
Fri, Nov 1 2024, 4:50 PM
It is our longstanding policy to strictly avoid politics except in cases where the political realm legitimately intersects with relevant events for ra...
Fri, Nov 1 2024, 10:06 AM
When the median forecast for today's jobs report began circulating, many a market watcher felt that the 113k forecast was too low compared to the 254k...
Thu, Oct 31 2024, 4:53 PM
Will Jobs Data Finally Get Bond Market's Attention?
It's been a weird week so far with a crazy combination o...
Thu, Oct 31 2024, 3:35 PM
Mortgage rates rates moved moderately higher today, and while that leaves the average 30yr fixed rate only slightly higher than it was on Tuesday morn...
Thu, Oct 31 2024, 12:16 PM
If it weren't for the surge of volume in Treasuries lining up perfectly with economic report release times, one might wonder if traders even care that...
Wed, Oct 30 2024, 4:35 PM
Decent Showing in Light of Stronger Data
Bonds lost ground today, but not as much as one might expect given ...
Wed, Oct 30 2024, 3:57 PM
The jobs report that came out at the beginning of October was a big wake up call for interest rates. Up until then, the prevailing belief was that th...
Wed, Oct 30 2024, 11:26 AM
It's been an interesting morning for the bond market so far. ADP employment came in much stronger than expected. 15 minutes later, Q3 GDP was slight...
