Mon, Oct 30 2023, 3:23 PM
First Hurdle Cleared. More to Come
On what has the potential to be a momentous week, the bond market has cle...
Mon, Oct 30 2023, 9:38 AM
The uncommon combination of events and the market movement potential of this week is hard to overstate. Each layer is important in and of itself, but ...
Fri, Oct 27 2023, 5:32 PM
Mortgage rates managed to have a nice, boring Friday with minimal movement. That's a victory considering yesterday saw a decent move lower, but victo...
Fri, Oct 27 2023, 4:15 PM
Boring, Flat Friday Leaves Focus Where it Should Be
It's hard to overstate just how much potential the upcom...
Fri, Oct 27 2023, 12:35 PM
Things have been eventful this week, to say the least, especially when considering the level of volatility relative to the underlying market movers in...
Thu, Oct 26 2023, 4:48 PM
Mortgage rates have been bouncing around by leaps and bounds in a wide, sideways range over the past 2 weeks. The upper boundary of that range happen...
Thu, Oct 26 2023, 4:34 PM
Exciting Times and a Range-Bound Rally
Next week is one of the most exciting and potentially significant wee...
Thu, Oct 26 2023, 12:04 PM
Bonds are in an ongoing consolidation after 10yr yields hit 5% last week. The consolidation cuts both ways and today is a good cut. Yields hit 4.99%...
Wed, Oct 25 2023, 5:58 PM
It's Not So Bad if You Forget The Past 3 Days
Bonds had a somewhat encouraging rally over the past 3 busines...
Wed, Oct 25 2023, 3:12 PM
Just when it looked like something new and different might be happening in the mortgage rate world, the market is quickly back to its old ways. Aft...
Wed, Oct 25 2023, 11:51 AM
Tuesday brought a dose of encouragement for the bond market. It was the third straight day of gains--an uncommon feat in recent months, to be sure! T...
Tue, Oct 24 2023, 4:35 PM
Mortgage rates didn't move much today, but the movement was in a friendly direction at least. The caveat is that this pertains to the average lender....
Tue, Oct 24 2023, 4:15 PM
Encouraged, But Not Convinced
It is certainly encouraging to see a modestly positive day for the bond market...
Tue, Oct 24 2023, 11:53 AM
When the big corner is eventually turned for rates, it will have to start somewhere, so let's talk about whether the current bond rally could be the f...
Mon, Oct 23 2023, 4:51 PM
Mortgage rates began the day in higher territory due to overnight weakness in the bond market. Bonds (like US Treasuries or the MBS that determine mo...
Mon, Oct 23 2023, 4:50 PM
Big Rally, But Not Big Enough to Demand an Interesting Explanation
It is unfortunate that, due to timing and...
Fri, Oct 20 2023, 4:21 PM
Mortgage rates finally broke the 8% ceiling this week after months of gradual upward movement in the 7% range. At the same time, Existing Home Sales f...
Thu, Oct 19 2023, 4:46 PM
There have been some more abrupt rate spikes in the recent past--days where the average mortgage rate has risen by more than an eighth of a percent (t...
Thu, Oct 19 2023, 11:39 AM
This morning is off to what could potentially be described as a "weird" start. If it's not weird, it's at least interesting. Why weird? Bonds ralli...
Wed, Oct 18 2023, 4:54 PM
Our rate index has rapidly grown in popularity and exposure in recent years because it is timely and because it accounts for upfront costs in a way th...
Wed, Oct 18 2023, 4:45 PM
Just Another "Worst Day Since..." Type of Day
In a rising rate environment where long term boundaries have r...
Tue, Oct 17 2023, 4:22 PM
Inflation and economic growth... Regardless of our thoughts on the underlying reasons, these two factors have played a key role in skyrocketing rates...
Tue, Oct 17 2023, 4:04 PM
Strong Retail Sales Data and Logical Consequences
Today's morning commentary may as well be the recap. Very...
Tue, Oct 17 2023, 11:46 AM
In addition to looking at economic data, the Fed also gets an earful from their "contacts" in the community. One would have to assume that those cont...
Mon, Oct 16 2023, 4:22 PM
Last week was mostly good for mortgage rates, even if the goodness was made possible in large part by the badness of the previous week. By Friday, ra...
Fri, Oct 13 2023, 7:26 PM
After hitting the highest levels in decades last week, mortgage rates dropped sharply at the beginning of this week. At first glance, this was a class...
Fri, Oct 13 2023, 4:25 PM
Decent Recovery But MBS Underperform
On Thursday, 10yr yields came close to spiking 20bps, trough to peak, i...
Fri, Oct 13 2023, 12:45 PM
Bonds drifted gradually but consistently intro stronger overnight. We could point to a few events and a few pieces of data (softer Chinese inflation,...
Thu, Oct 12 2023, 4:23 PM
Mortgage rates have enjoyed 2 days of uncommonly big gains. Granted, they come at the expense of horrific events and an exceptionally high starting p...
Thu, Oct 12 2023, 4:13 PM
Bonds Snap Back to Reality on Higher Core Services CPI
Even before this week's rally began, we knew to be on...
Thu, Oct 12 2023, 11:04 AM
After a few days where it's been somewhat challenging to sort through the most relevant market movement considerations (war vs Fed speakers vs technic...
Wed, Oct 11 2023, 4:45 PM
The holiday-shortened week began yesterday with a substantial decline in average mortgage rates. Caveats abound, however. They include things like t...
Wed, Oct 11 2023, 4:44 PM
Why Are Bonds Still Rallying?
Bonds have seen only a few examples of a solid 2-day rally over the past few m...
Wed, Oct 11 2023, 12:07 PM
This morning's only upper tier economic report, The Producer Price Index (PPI), came out a bit hotter than expected with a fairly significant revision...
Tue, Oct 10 2023, 4:40 PM
The average mortgage lender is quoting a top tier 30yr fixed mortgage rate that is nearly a quarter of a percent lower than the same scenario last Fri...
Tue, Oct 10 2023, 4:32 PM
Rate Rally More to Do With Fed or Flight to Safety?
Bonds rallied fairly sharply to start the holiday-shorte...
Tue, Oct 10 2023, 12:13 PM
News of the Hamas bombing of Israel dominated headlines after markets closed last week. As the situation escalated over the weekend, financial market...
Fri, Oct 6 2023, 7:06 PM
Rates were already high coming into this week. As of last Friday, that meant an average 30yr fixed rate just under 7.5%. As of this Friday, we're clos...
Fri, Oct 6 2023, 4:33 PM
Logical Reaction to Jobs Data, But Why The Mid-Day Bounce?
Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP), the headline component of...
Fri, Oct 6 2023, 11:18 AM
This week has brought a series of fairly simple mornings with the initial reaction to economic reports playing out in a logical direction. Monday: st...
Thu, Oct 5 2023, 4:17 PM
Thursday's Rally Changes Nothing Ahead of Jobs Report
While bonds definitely had a logical reaction to this ...
Thu, Oct 5 2023, 3:33 PM
For the first time in nearly a month, the bond market (which dictates day to day mortgage rate movement) managed to string together two winning days i...
Thu, Oct 5 2023, 12:16 PM
Time for another installment of "finding a narrative to fit the price action." In other words, bonds aren't doing what we'd expect based on this morn...
Wed, Oct 4 2023, 4:25 PM
Mortgage rates began the day at new multi-decade highs, but only by a small margin over yesterday. This was counterintuitive at first glance because ...
Wed, Oct 4 2023, 4:15 PM
Surprisingly Calm and Logical Rally
Today's economic data came in either flat or noticeably weaker depending...
Wed, Oct 4 2023, 12:01 PM
Bonds had a scary overnight session with 10s hitting highs of 4.884 around 3am ET. They rallied a full 15bps over the next 6 hours, most recently wit...
Tue, Oct 3 2023, 3:27 PM
Mortgage rates were already close to the highest levels in more than 20 years yesterday--an unpleasant milestone that was easily surpassed after today...
Tue, Oct 3 2023, 3:26 PM
"Higher For Longer" Fears Becoming a Reality After JOLTS
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) ...
Tue, Oct 3 2023, 11:25 AM
In the wake of the Fed announcement from 2 weeks ago, one key component of our bearish thesis was that bonds had to brace for the potential impact tha...
Mon, Oct 2 2023, 4:39 PM
The average didn't quite make it back to the multidecade highs seen last week, but the average borrower would see little--if any--difference in today'...
