Wed, Feb 27 2019, 5:41 PM
"Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
That's one of my favorite lines from some old book I read, or maybe it was a play (hint: it was a play!...
Wed, Feb 27 2019, 9:52 AM
Today brings a 2nd day of congressional testimony with Fed Chair Powell, this time before the House Financial Services Committee. The economic IQ var...
Tue, Feb 26 2019, 5:23 PM
Despite a fair amount of anticipation, today's Powell testimony proved to be a non-event for the bond market. Instead, things like the weak Housing...
Tue, Feb 26 2019, 4:41 PM
Whereas mortgage rates were almost undetectably higher yesterday, they were lower by roughly the same insignificant amount today. In either case, and ...
Tue, Feb 26 2019, 9:59 AM
The Fed is undoubtedly a major factor in market movement--especially when it comes to rates. At first glance, the key consideration is their collec...
Mon, Feb 25 2019, 4:40 PM
If bonds happened to move higher in yield by more than they did today, we'd be talking about how the announcement of a US/China tariff extension put...
Mon, Feb 25 2019, 3:24 PM
Mortgage rates were very nearly unchanged today, although the average lender was just slightly higher. Investors reacted to news over the weekend that...
Mon, Feb 25 2019, 9:10 AM
The "big" news over the weekend was the announcement of an extension on US/China tariffs that were set to go into effect on March 1st. While an event...
Fri, Feb 22 2019, 7:23 PM
As recently as January 10th, Jerome Powell unequivocally stated that the Fed's balance sheet wind-down was on auto pilot. In other words, they weren'...
Fri, Feb 22 2019, 6:12 PM
Mortgage rates are most directly affected by the day to day movement in the bond market. It's interesting to consider that bonds improved quite a bit ...
Fri, Feb 22 2019, 9:56 AM
If you're not familiar with these terms, you'll need the following definitions for today's commentary: hawkish/dovish.
The Fed is a key ingredient i...
Thu, Feb 21 2019, 4:48 PM
Although today brought the week's most anticipated line-up of economic data as well as overnight headlines on US/China trade agreements, the biggest m...
Thu, Feb 21 2019, 4:03 PM
Mortgage rates may be close to their lowest levels in more than a year, but they were slightly higher versus yesterday. Yesterday's rates were close e...
Thu, Feb 21 2019, 8:29 AM
If you're just joining us, we've been talking quite a bit in recent weeks about a consolidation range/trend in the bond market. This refers to a seri...
Wed, Feb 20 2019, 5:04 PM
One of the most interesting parts of today's Fed Minutes release was their characterization of the market's surprise at December announcement. At be...
Wed, Feb 20 2019, 4:46 PM
Mortgage rates finally broke from their recent "back-and-forth" pattern of the past 7 business days and moved lower for the 2nd day in a row . Althoug...
Wed, Feb 20 2019, 9:18 AM
Yesterday, I mentioned that it was rare to see short-term momentum technicals consolidate in the center of their "overbought vs oversold" range. Thi...
Tue, Feb 19 2019, 5:17 PM
The range may be breaking! Well, one of the ranges we've been tracking may be breaking, as long as tomorrow sees bond markets hold the gains they saw...
Tue, Feb 19 2019, 3:47 PM
Mortgage rates fell modestly today, making it the 7th straight business day where they've moved in the opposite direction from the previous day. This ...
Tue, Feb 19 2019, 9:12 AM
For all of the potential market movers that anyone can discuss so far in 2019, we really haven't seen any concerted effort to take yields higher or lo...
Fri, Feb 15 2019, 3:43 PM
Since Retail Sales rocked markets yesterday, perhaps bonds would be interested in responding to economic data again today? This question seemed to h...
Fri, Feb 15 2019, 3:01 PM
Mortgage rates were slightly higher today, marking the 6th day in a row where they've reversed course versus the previous day. This is the sort of beh...
Fri, Feb 15 2019, 9:53 AM
Rates were at long term highs in early November 2019. Several global economic risks were beginning to swirl at the same time. These included a slowd...
Thu, Feb 14 2019, 5:18 PM
Of all the reports silenced by the government shutdown, Retail Sales was probably the most missed. It didn't help that December is a rather important...
Thu, Feb 14 2019, 4:43 PM
Mortgage rates recovered today after rising to the highest levels in a week as of yesterday. The improvement followed a much-weaker-than-expected Reta...
Thu, Feb 14 2019, 8:31 AM
Perhaps it wasn't their fault, but several top tier economic reports up and left us during the government shutdown. We knew we'd see them again at so...
Wed, Feb 13 2019, 6:18 PM
At first glance, this morning's weakness was all about the Consumer Price Index (CPI)--the most widely-followed inflation report. In order to make a ...
Wed, Feb 13 2019, 4:41 PM
Mortgage rates hadn't changed much over the past few business days, even though they arguably should have moved a bit higher yesterday. That made toda...
Wed, Feb 13 2019, 8:48 AM
This morning brings the week's first major economic report in the form of the Consumer Price Index (CPI)--one of the biggest inflation reports. Infla...
Tue, Feb 12 2019, 5:18 PM
It's hard to say exactly where stocks and bonds would be today absent the news from yesterday night regarding a possible shutdown deal. Both sides of...
Tue, Feb 12 2019, 4:32 PM
Mortgage rates were roughly unchanged yet again today, although the average lender was charging microscopically higher fees compared to yesterday. The...
Tue, Feb 12 2019, 9:46 AM
In the shorter-term, there's nothing too interesting about the past few weeks of trading. Relative to the highs and lows set in the first 3 weeks of ...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 4:26 PM
I have to stretch to make a day like today interesting. As I'm fond of doing, I could easily label this one of those unofficial 3-day weekend type of...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 3:55 PM
Mortgage rates held their ground fairly well today, despite the fact that underlying bond markets were weaker. Bond market weakness is associated with...
Mon, Feb 11 2019, 8:53 AM
The two key fiscal issues at the moment are the trade deal with China and the expiration of temporary government funding at the end of this week. Bet...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 6:05 PM
The bond market is exuding a sort of confidence we've not seen in a long time. I'm not saying that because outright rate levels are lower than they...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 5:36 PM
Mortgage rates may not be quite as low as they were on January 31st, but they nonetheless managed to end at the lowest levels of this week . Unlike Ja...
Fri, Feb 8 2019, 9:52 AM
Whereas "moving the goalposts" has a negative connotation in general (referring to the changing of the rules in the middle of the game), it's a fairly...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 6:48 PM
2014 was marked by a sense of hope that helped both sides of the market (debt and equity) make solid gains heading into early 2015. Rates in the US...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 5:37 PM
Thursday plays host to vastly more mortgage rate articles than any other day of the week. This has to do with the regular weekly release of Freddie Ma...
Thu, Feb 7 2019, 10:12 AM
If you thought last week's Fed announcement was surprisingly dovish/friendly/concerned, you weren't alone. Compared to the "steady-as-she-goes" Decem...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 3:20 PM
If you're operating under the assumption that the prevailing momentum in bond markets is sideways for the time being, today offered few surprises. In...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 2:47 PM
Mortgage rates moved lower for the second straight day after rising moderately on Friday and Monday. This brings the average lender to the second lowe...
Wed, Feb 6 2019, 9:14 AM
One of the best side effects of the recent consolidation has been the outperformance of MBS vs Treasuries. We often talk about the fact that MBS like...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 5:24 PM
An interesting thing happened today for those who were paying close enough attention to notice. At face value the week's most important economic repo...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 5:03 PM
Mortgage rates stabilized today, after moving higher somewhat quickly following several strong economic reports on Friday. If you'd like to revisit th...
Tue, Feb 5 2019, 9:53 AM
This is a concept we've revisited a few times over the years and it goes something like this:
A strengthening economy implies rising earnings/profi...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 4:30 PM
Chinese markets were closed overnight for New Year. This slowed trade somewhat. Coupled with a lack of significant economic data this morning, it al...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 4:08 PM
Mortgage rates continued moving higher today as Fridays unfortunate series of events seems to have motivated a big bounce. What events are those? Name...
Mon, Feb 4 2019, 9:34 AM
Last week's key events were the Fed announcement on Wednesday and the jobs report on Friday (with other econ data playing a strong supporting role). ...
