Wed, Mar 4 2020, 3:37 PM
I was surprised to open up shop this morning and find yields and MBS right about where we left them yesterday afternoon. I was also surprised yesterd...
Tue, Mar 3 2020, 5:03 PM
This is mostly a reprint of a piece I wrote earlier today for the MBS Commentary channel. If you read that one, you've basically already seen what fol...
Tue, Mar 3 2020, 12:42 PM
The Fed announced an emergency rate cut of 50bps today (0.50%). Great! So your mortgage rate could be 0.5% lower, right?
WRONG!
And to be cl...
Mon, Mar 2 2020, 5:15 PM
There is always that one stomach-churning day that arrives in the midst of an epic bond rally that makes you question everything. Well, perhaps we do...
Mon, Mar 2 2020, 9:58 AM
I'm not an infectious disease specialist. I haven't been staying up all night reading all available literature on coronavirus (CV). But best I can t...
Mon, Mar 2 2020, 9:24 AM
Mortgage rates officially hit all-time lows this morning. Even so, it continues to be the case that Treasury yields (often referred to as the basis fo...
Fri, Feb 28 2020, 11:40 AM
This post will focus mostly on the charts, which many of you have requested, as I need to turn my focus toward a few other things (especially when it ...
Thu, Feb 27 2020, 6:30 PM
10yr yields were as low as 1.24% and ended the day at 1.27% after a decent amount of volatility. MBS gained almost a quarter point, but mortgage lend...
Thu, Feb 27 2020, 5:26 PM
Mortgage rates hit the lowest levels in 8 years either today or yesterday, depending on the lender, just narrowly edging out the rates seen in early J...
Thu, Feb 27 2020, 9:09 AM
Good morning. 10yr yields are in the 1.2's. All-time lows.
We follow MBS and the 10yr Treasury yield (and other rates, when relevant) here. The f...
Wed, Feb 26 2020, 10:03 AM
2012 was almost all about the European systemic crisis, although doubts remained about the US economic lift-off as well. All of the above played out ...
Tue, Feb 25 2020, 4:56 PM
Mortgage rates have been putting on a rather frustrating and exciting show in the month of February. On the one hand, they're at their lowest levels s...
Tue, Feb 25 2020, 12:22 PM
For the purposes of following along with the underlying forces affecting mortgage rates, Freddie Mac MBS essentially never mattered. Fannie had alway...
Tue, Feb 25 2020, 9:43 AM
1.67, 1.50, 1.43, and 1.32% in 10yr Treasury yields... These are the only 4 key levels you need right now. Why are we talking about 10yr yields if t...
Mon, Feb 24 2020, 8:24 PM
Yields plummeted overnight and again this morning, giving chase to a massive global stock market sell-off due to rapidly rising coronavirus fears. MB...
Mon, Feb 24 2020, 7:18 PM
Mortgage rates continue to carve out the unlikeliest of victories in 2020 with significant help from coronavirus. The epidemic has taken a year that w...
Mon, Feb 24 2020, 10:58 AM
Coronavirus (or nCov for short) made more disconcerting headlines over the weekend and has generally proven itself to be far more capable in that rega...
Fri, Feb 21 2020, 3:52 PM
Yesterday's mortgage rate commentary noted a fresh move down to the lowest levels in more than 3.5 years . With just a bit more improvement, the same ...
Fri, Feb 21 2020, 9:47 AM
The bond market specializes in making bets about future economic realities even as the stock market reflects shorter-term performance of the biggest c...
Thu, Feb 20 2020, 4:35 PM
At the start of the overnight session (yesterday night), 10yr yields were up around 1.58%. By 1030am ET, they'd already fallen to 1.525%. Up until t...
Thu, Feb 20 2020, 3:52 PM
Mortgage rates haven't been this low for this long in years--3.5 years to be exact. Brexit was the talk of the town in the middle of 2016 and it resul...
Thu, Feb 20 2020, 10:23 AM
In case you're just joining us, there's a consolidation going on in the bond market. That means yields are trading in a progressively narrower range ...
Wed, Feb 19 2020, 9:26 AM
Thinking about the bond market in terms of rates and yields affords certain analytical luxuries. One is the ability to think in "upside down" terms w...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 3:01 PM
Mortgage rates are starting the new week off on a stronger note after concerns over coronavirus impacts moved markets over the weekend. While coronavi...
Tue, Feb 18 2020, 9:13 AM
The ability of the bond market to defy the cues seen elsewhere in the financial market has been relatively impressive over the past few weeks. It cou...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 5:27 PM
Until today, even though bonds were already in a sideways pattern, we would have to have given the nod to the uptrend in rates vs the downtrend (2 com...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 4:02 PM
Mortgage rates have primarily been at the whim of the general tone of coronavirus news for the past few weeks. That meant a swift move to multi-year l...
Fri, Feb 14 2020, 10:32 AM
I'll admit, there are times where I point out some chart-based evidence of uncertainty in the bond market and I feel like we're just delaying an inevi...
Thu, Feb 13 2020, 10:15 AM
Fancy chart overlays and technical studies are frustrating in the sense that they give us another angle to understand and discuss market movement, but...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 4:20 PM
A few notes on the bond market's recent plans:
First few days of 2020: Come into the new year ready for that break above 2.0% that everyone was ex...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 3:43 PM
Mortgage rates have spent just over a week moving back up from the lowest levels in more than three and a half years. Those long-term lows came courte...
Wed, Feb 12 2020, 9:17 AM
2 weeks ago, as rates plummeted toward the lowest levels in more than 3 years, I began to point out a very obvious caveat to the gains. Because coron...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 5:19 PM
Bonds were weaker in the overnight session as Chinese equities markets continued to bounce toward higher levels. This follows a head-fake toward lowe...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 3:51 PM
Mortgage rates were very slightly higher today after being modestly lower over the weekend, but in general, remain very close to the lowest levels in ...
Tue, Feb 11 2020, 10:10 AM
Amid a dearth of important economic data between now and Friday, the bond market doesn't have much to do when it comes to pricing in bigger-picture ec...
Mon, Feb 10 2020, 9:36 AM
If the US/Iran flare up provided an opening act to the unexpected drama of 2020, coronavirus has been the headliner. Before these two events took the...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 5:23 PM
Today's big to-do was a paradoxical bond market rally in response to a much stronger-than-expected jobs report. This wasn't just a case of a compelli...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 3:56 PM
Mortgage rates completely defied the odds. They even defied convention. Specifically, they managed to move appreciably lower even though today's big j...
Fri, Feb 7 2020, 10:18 AM
Here's one of those NFP mornings where it would have been very hard to predict what we're seeing in bonds based on what we've seen in the NFP numbers....
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:40 PM
The bond market took a break from the past 3 days of weakness today. There weren't any significant economic reports or news events (not as far as the...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 4:00 PM
Mortgage rates managed to hold steady , for the most part, today. Some lenders were offering slightly better or worse terms compared to yesterday, but...
Thu, Feb 6 2020, 9:23 AM
One of the most stunning and profound features of the past week of trading days has been the intensely higher volumes-especially in the overnight trad...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 6:14 PM
So far, the correction to the coronavirus bond market rally is only a few days old, but it became much more problematic today. Yesterday was arguably...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 5:28 PM
Mortgage rates moved higher again today as investors reacted to updates about the coronavirus outbreak. This has been the dominant motivation for the ...
Wed, Feb 5 2020, 9:43 AM
Heading into this morning, it looked as if bonds would have a fighting chance, at the very least. The fight in question is against the big bounce tow...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 6:27 PM
We knew we'd have to deal with it at some point, and now we have to wonder if it's already here: the coronavirus bounce.
Why did we know it was c...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 6:03 PM
Mortgage rates have been on a tear recently. The average lender has either held rates steady or improved them every single day since January 16th. Som...
Tue, Feb 4 2020, 9:32 AM
In many respects, the market response to the coronavirus outbreak has been able to take cues from past experience with SARS in 2002/2003. In many oth...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 6:28 PM
Today's key scheduled event was the release of the ISM Manufacturing PMI--one of the several most important reports after the perennial heavy hitter, ...
Mon, Feb 3 2020, 5:39 PM
In the world of interest rates, it's good to be a mortgage today . The dominant species on that world is US Treasuries: the quintessential dollar-base...
