Thu, Dec 17 2015, 4:59 PM
Mortgage rates continued modestly lower today as financial markets continue sorting out their reaction to yesterday's Fed rate hike. As a reminde...
Wed, Dec 16 2015, 8:20 PM
MBS traded less than a 3/8ths point range to end down an eighth of a point (Fannie 3.5) and 10yr yields traded an 8 bp range to end LESS THAN ONE BAS...
Wed, Dec 16 2015, 7:33 AM
Sometimes we approach days with big-ticket events with great anticipation only to be let down by the amount of excitement offered. Today is a bit di...
Wed, Dec 16 2015, 6:40 PM
Mortgage rates moved just slightly lower today, despite the long-awaited Fed rate hike. Once again, that's LOWER mortgage rates and a HIGHER Fed ...
Wed, Dec 16 2015, 2:09 PM
Naturally, this is the most changed Fed Announcement in recent memory. Strike-through indicates previous text. Underline indicates new text.
Releas...
Tue, Dec 15 2015, 7:33 AM
Bond markets sold-off in a fairly big way yesterday, and for no particular reason apart from the fact that they rallied in a fairly big way on Friday....
Tue, Dec 15 2015, 5:38 PM
There's very little to report--with respect to the second half of the day--that hasn't already been covered in the quick and dirty bullet points from ...
Tue, Dec 15 2015, 4:57 PM
Mortgage rates jumped again today, moving to the highest levels more than a month ahead of tomorrow's hotly anticipated Fed Announcement. Many le...
Tue, Dec 15 2015, 1:34 PM
Here is the quickest and dirtiest way to look at bond movements over the past few days, in bullet points:
This month's ECB shocker (12/3) defle...
Mon, Dec 14 2015, 7:33 AM
Roughly 3 months after the Fed's last stellar opportunity to enact its long-anticipated rate hike, we come to meeting that is all but certain to host ...
Mon, Dec 14 2015, 5:44 PM
It's the latest fad: junk bonds! You might not even know what that is, and you certainly don't need to. A junk bond is another term for a "high yi...
Mon, Dec 14 2015, 5:10 PM
Mortgage rates moved quickly higher today, more than erasing Friday's strong performance. If fact, most lenders are at their highest levels in mo...
Mon, Dec 14 2015, 2:46 PM
With the much-anticipated Fed rate hike only 2 days away, volatility continues to build in financial markets. It's not that investors disagree abou...
Fri, Dec 11 2015, 7:32 AM
If this week's economic data and events were auditioning for some reality show, market participants would be like the judges. This would be like one ...
Fri, Dec 11 2015, 6:46 PM
If you didn't catch the mid-day commentary , it has a good recap of most of the day's activity. If you're not into links, here are the important par...
Fri, Dec 11 2015, 6:18 PM
Mortgage rates recovered yesterday's losses in many cases, and moved even lower in many other cases. The mortgage sector was one of the tamer per...
Fri, Dec 11 2015, 1:58 PM
Life isn't always fair for MBS. Sure, there was QE3 which specifically targeted MBS over Treasuries, leaving the latter out in the cold on a relative...
Thu, Dec 10 2015, 9:09 AM
My apologies for the commentary coming out later than normal a few times this week. I've been doing battle with water here in the Pacific Northwest, ...
Thu, Dec 10 2015, 5:46 PM
At 9am, domestic bond markets were just barely clawing their way into positive territory after an uneventful overnight trading session. That made f...
Thu, Dec 10 2015, 5:21 PM
Mortgage rates moved moderately higher today, bringing them to the worst levels in exactly one week. That said, the movement over that time has b...
Thu, Dec 10 2015, 1:44 PM
There continues to be very little to discuss in terms of interesting, relevant market developments this week. Chalk this up to the theme we've discus...
Wed, Dec 9 2015, 9:06 AM
Are you more of a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty kind of person? There's something for everyone hiding in yesterday's ostensibly boring bond mark...
Wed, Dec 9 2015, 5:21 PM
Today's bond market movements were a bit more pronounced than yesterday's, but similar in some regards. The first similarly was the inconsequential...
Wed, Dec 9 2015, 4:41 PM
Mortgage rates held steady for a second straight day, but only when considering the end-of-day rate sheets. The morning hours were similar on eac...
Wed, Dec 9 2015, 1:23 PM
Bond markets began the domestic session in slightly weaker territory after an overnight session that was almost completely uneventful. The two key t...
Tue, Dec 8 2015, 7:32 AM
"Distance makes the heart grow fonder," as they say. To some extent, it's the same for bonds markets and trading inspiration: the lower the inspirati...
Tue, Dec 8 2015, 7:11 PM
Bond markets had an exceedingly acceptable day. MBS and and Treasuries were generally in stronger territory by the end of the day, but by too small a...
Tue, Dec 8 2015, 5:17 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today after spending the past 2 business days recovering from the worst day in more than 2 years last Thursday. As we ...
Tue, Dec 8 2015, 2:12 PM
The overnight session was both informative and positive for bond markets. The informative part was the technical floor seen in 10yr yields (2.20) a...
Mon, Dec 7 2015, 7:33 AM
This week begins not with any sort of exciting data or scheduled events, but rather with a mission: sorting out whether last week's violent spike on T...
Mon, Dec 7 2015, 6:46 PM
Bond markets put in another solid day of gains today, and have now erased more than half of last Thursday's losses. If we go all the way back to the ...
Mon, Dec 7 2015, 5:01 PM
Mortgage rates continued lower at a decent pace today, further eroding the big move higher seen last Thursday. While the average lender isn't qui...
Mon, Dec 7 2015, 2:39 PM
Bond markets began the overnight session in just slightly weaker territory, but never entered into a negative trend during. European bond markets ral...
Fri, Dec 4 2015, 7:33 AM
In yesterday's recap, I asserted that the crazy sell-off was 100% about Draghi and negative infinity percent about Yellen's congressional testimony. ...
Fri, Dec 4 2015, 7:02 PM
If the Draghi sell-off was an unmitigated disaster yesterday, it's only a plain old disaster today. In fact, even 'disaster' may be too strong a wor...
Fri, Dec 4 2015, 5:26 PM
Mortgage rates fought back today , following their biggest single-day jump in more than 2 years on Thursday. Today's significant event was the Emp...
Fri, Dec 4 2015, 2:07 PM
This morning's NFP data came in just a bit hotter than expected at 211k vs a median forecast of 200k. Revisions were fairly strong, but wage growth...
Thu, Dec 3 2015, 10:03 PM
It was Draghi! Not Yellen!
You know me (maybe?). I hate those cheesy headlines with the "THIS" that alludes to what the headline should have jus...
Thu, Dec 3 2015, 7:33 AM
Remember 2011-2012? Sure there was some fun domestic stuff, like the first major debt ceiling battle, Operation Twist, and QE3, but for the most part...
Thu, Dec 3 2015, 7:13 PM
Mortgage rates were crushed today , moving higher at the fastest single-day pace since 2013. The average lender saw a full eighth point hike in 30...
Thu, Dec 3 2015, 1:46 PM
The headline is no joke . In terms of the change from the previous close, bond market have lost more ground today than any other day since mid 2013....
Wed, Dec 2 2015, 7:32 AM
I saw a lot of this type of stuff yesterday, both in the news and in less public circles: something to the effect of the recently weak data giving th...
Wed, Dec 2 2015, 7:14 PM
Bond markets had been trending in an unfriendly direction all day . The charts on the dashboard don't capture the strength of the trend because it b...
Wed, Dec 2 2015, 5:05 PM
Coming off their best day in over a month, mortgage rates held mostly steady today,
although some lenders were slightly higher. This is somew...
Wed, Dec 2 2015, 2:17 PM
Yesterday's ISM data may have sparked some hope for a long-shot, come-from-behind, Cinderella story victory for a weak economy making an argument agai...
Tue, Dec 1 2015, 8:51 AM
The end of November was a supportive environment for longer-dated Treasuries like 10yr notes and 30yr bonds. The MBS that most directly affect rate...
Tue, Dec 1 2015, 5:43 PM
Granted, it would be a long shot, and it would require the rest of the week's data playing along, but bond markets are suddenly considering that the r...
Tue, Dec 1 2015, 4:24 PM
Mortgage rates had their best day in over a month today. It was also the first day with any legitimate movement in nearly three weeks. Over that...
Tue, Dec 1 2015, 1:56 PM
Bond markets are in the midst of their best day of trading since October 2nd. For perspective, that says less about how strong things are today and m...
Mon, Nov 30 2015, 12:40 PM
In many ways, today still has the feel of the holiday-shortened Thanksgiving week. Markets have been slow to move and generally not interested in rea...
