Fri, Feb 1 2019, 7:24 PM
I imagine if you polled a thousand people who were among the most qualified to have an opinion about today's nonfarm payrolls forecast, you'd have b...
Fri, Feb 1 2019, 7:01 PM
Mortgage rates fell significantly yesterday, extending a reaction to the Federal Reserve's announcement and press conference from Wednesday. The Fed w...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 5:35 PM
Yesterday marked a fairly big adjustment in the Fed's monetary approach to the same old underlying economic realities that were in place at the time o...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 4:31 PM
Mortgage rates fell more triumphantly today, extending their reaction to yesterday's Federal Reserve announcement. The Fed isn't in direct control of ...
Thu, Jan 31 2019, 9:50 AM
There's no question that the Fed was surprisingly dovish yesterday--even among those who were expecting a dovish shift. But there is a question as to...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 4:45 PM
Today's Fed Announcement was the first scheduled big-ticket market mover of the year since the NFP report on January 4th. With the government shutdow...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 4:15 PM
Mortgage rates fell moderately today, largely in response to the Federal Reserve's policy announcement. The Fed is in charge of setting a key short-te...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 2:03 PM
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in November December indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen a...
Wed, Jan 30 2019, 9:20 AM
Today's key even is the 2pm ET Fed Announcement. There will be no hike and no adjustment to existing policies. That said, given a noticeably dovis...
Tue, Jan 29 2019, 4:24 PM
There were a smattering of headlines and events available for bond markets to digest today. If rates ended up moving higher, we could likely find a w...
Tue, Jan 29 2019, 4:01 PM
Mortgage rates didn't move yesterday, despite a moderate amount of improvement in underlying bond markets. When bonds improve, rates tend to move lowe...
Tue, Jan 29 2019, 9:19 AM
In their best Caddyshack voice, traders are collectively saying "well? We're waiting" to both stocks and bonds at the moment as each side of the mark...
Mon, Jan 28 2019, 5:15 PM
Back on January 18th, stocks made it as high as they've been able to make it since early December. From there, they ebbed a bit and traded sideways f...
Mon, Jan 28 2019, 4:23 PM
Mortgage rates didn't move at all today, on average, but that's likely to change throughout the course of the week--possibly several times. Interest r...
Mon, Jan 28 2019, 9:43 AM
The mighty Employment Situation (the big jobs report that gives us nonfarm payrolls, unemployment rate, avg hourly earnings, etc) is the king of all e...
Fri, Jan 25 2019, 6:25 PM
Today's focal point was an anticlimactic can-kicking episode wherein the government shutdown was finally ended, but only for 3 weeks. The passage of ...
Fri, Jan 25 2019, 6:00 PM
Mortgage rates were only slightly higher today, and didn't rise enough to make it above the levels that showed up somewhat abruptly on Wednesday. That...
Fri, Jan 25 2019, 9:50 AM
We often use terms like "stock lever" and concepts like asset allocation to discuss the conventional wisdom of stock prices and bond yields moving in ...
Thu, Jan 24 2019, 4:25 PM
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi delivered his customary press conference following this morning's policy announcement. Markets expected ...
Thu, Jan 24 2019, 3:45 PM
Mortgage rates jumped to the highest levels in 2019 yesterday, even if only by a small margin. It was one of the few abrupt moves we've seen in recent...
Thu, Jan 24 2019, 8:47 AM
The ECB announced no change to its policy rates this morning, which was completely in-line with market expectations. In a bit of departure from the n...
Wed, Jan 23 2019, 3:29 PM
There are several "somethings" that could prove inspirational for bond markets at the moment. The biggest among those continues to be any major shi...
Wed, Jan 23 2019, 3:06 PM
Mortgage rates jumped a bit today, as lenders got caught up with the bond market movements from last Friday. It's fair to wonder why they wouldn't hav...
Wed, Jan 23 2019, 9:01 AM
Bond yields and stock prices are beginning the day in moderately higher territory than yesterday. This keeps a negative trend intact for bonds (both ...
Tue, Jan 22 2019, 4:39 PM
For those who pay any sort of attention to technicals or simply to "key levels" in the bond market, Friday was the gloomiest day we've had in a whil...
Tue, Jan 22 2019, 4:06 PM
Mortgage rates were higher heading into the end of the previous week. To make matters worse, as of Friday afternoon, it didn't look like the average l...
Tue, Jan 22 2019, 8:54 AM
After today's Existing Home Sales data (which is unaffected by the government shutdown because it's published by the National Association of Realtors)...
Fri, Jan 18 2019, 4:11 PM
Bond markets sold-off today in a slightly more alarming way than we've seen so far in 2019. This was accompanied by 11th straight trading session w...
Fri, Jan 18 2019, 3:47 PM
Mortgage rates rose gently today. Most mortgage borrowers (and many mortgage professionals, for that matter) wouldn't be aware of slightly more alarmi...
Fri, Jan 18 2019, 9:44 AM
Ever since bottoming out in early 2019, 10yr Treasury yields faced a pretty clear line in the sand from a technical standpoint. 2.82% stuck out like ...
Thu, Jan 17 2019, 4:01 PM
The Wall St Journal ran a story this afternoon suggesting Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was pushing for a compromise deal to ease Tariffs on China in ord...
Thu, Jan 17 2019, 3:28 PM
Mortgage rates were technically steady today. In fact, as of this writing, most lenders are offering slightly better terms compared to yesterday, but ...
Thu, Jan 17 2019, 9:00 AM
Unless you've missed the past few days of commentary, you've heard me say something about the sideways uncertainty in markets as investors wait for a ...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 5:01 PM
Today would have been Retail Sales day were it not for the government shutdown. This also prevented Business Inventories from reporting (not an ins...
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 4:13 PM
Mortgage rates rose modestly today after spending the past 2 days moving sideways. It was really yesterday's market weakness that caused today's move....
Wed, Jan 16 2019, 8:47 AM
There will be no Retail Sales report this morning due to the government shutdown. This provides a perfect example of the issue the bond market is c...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 6:31 PM
The S&P had been idling in place with prices between 2560 and 2600 for more than a week. During that week, we've discussed the risks associated with ...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 4:44 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged yet again today. Given that rates are based on trading levels in underlying bond markets, it's no surprise to learn that...
Tue, Jan 15 2019, 8:39 AM
Neither side of the market (debt/bonds or stocks/equity) feels like it has enough information to move out of recent holding patterns. These sideways ...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 4:29 PM
The overnight trading session was thinly-traded due to a holiday closure in Tokyo. Buyers outnumbered sellers until the domestic session. Promptly a...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 3:50 PM
Mortgage rates held their ground today, keeping them in line with long-term lows achieved over the past 2 weeks. To be fair, it was the previous week ...
Mon, Jan 14 2019, 8:39 AM
The government shutdown is now the longest ever, and there are a variety of interesting implications. The first is that multiple economic reports wil...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 7:12 PM
Core CPI came in at 2.2% today. Back in 2016, this was cause for concern, but now bond markets trade like inflation isn't even a remote concern. What...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 6:11 PM
Mortgage rates improved today, breaking a 3-day streak with effectively no change. This gets us part of the way back down to the long-term lows achiev...
Fri, Jan 11 2019, 10:11 AM
Today's Consumer Price Index was one of the week's only " important " pieces of economic data. Or perhaps we should say it was one of the week's only...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 5:28 PM
It's hard to fault the bond market for any trading over the past several days. The data and the movement in other markets have both suggested bond ma...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 4:50 PM
Mortgage rates were unchanged again today, despite moderate weakness in underlying bond markets. Bonds are the primary ingredient used in determining ...
Thu, Jan 10 2019, 10:15 AM
The massive stock selling in Q3 2018 was clearly a big deal for bonds. As soon as the first wave of selling hit in stocks, bonds engaged what we refe...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 6:55 PM
The notion of "hope" comes up quite a bit in my daily recap pieces--often because something bad is happening and we hope for it to end or because some...
Wed, Jan 9 2019, 6:29 PM
Mortgage rates held steady today, after moving higher for the past 3 days. Underlying market movement was slightly calmer than it has been in recent d...
