More Help From Stocks, But More Reluctance From Bonds
Monday, March 10, 2025
More Help From Stocks, But More Reluctance From Bonds Up until just after 3pm ET, the stock market was on pace for its worst day of the recent selling spree in terms of day-over-day losses, but a rebound looks to be underway in the final hour of the NYSE session. The swan dive gave us another opp... .. read more..
Mortgage Rates Recover Some of Last Week's Losses
Monday, March 10, 2025
Conventional 30yr fixed mortgage rates hit their lowest levels in months last Tuesday morning, with the average lender right in line with levels from mid October or early December. After that, rates rose steadily for the next two days and leveled off on Friday. While the bounce was small enough t... .. read more..
HELOC, Processing, Compliance Tools; Rocket Buying Redfin; FHA/VA News; Reces...
Monday, March 10, 2025
“Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.” People flying around the nation have probably observed, or have heard, a change in the mood of airport security screeners. It turns out that the Trump Administration outlawed unions at TSA. Change is afoot. In my recent travels around the country, ... .. read more..
Bonds Shaking Off Last Week's Weakness as R Word Returns
Monday, March 10, 2025
Over the weekend, Trump was asked if he was expecting a recession this year. He replied that although he hates to predict such things, "there is a period of transition, because what we're doing is very big." There are a few ways to read that response, but one of the least debatable is that the ad... .. read more..
Bonds Give Up AM Gains After Powell Speech
Friday, March 7, 2025
Bonds Give Up AM Gains After Powell Speech Bonds made it through the jobs report in good shape with modest gains intact heading into the PM hours. Things changed after that, with the most obvious turning point coinciding with Fed Chair Powell's speech. If traders had been hoping to hear Pow... .. read more..
Mortgage Rates Back Near Yesterday's Levels After Starting Out Lower
Friday, March 7, 2025
The average mortgage lender was briefly able to offer noticeably lower rates this morning compared to yesterday's latest levels. Credit goes to this morning's jobs report for coming in a bit weaker than expected. What do jobs have to do with rates? Rates are based on bonds and bonds are heavily i... .. read more..
Big Bounce in Refi Demand Thanks to Lower Rates
Friday, March 7, 2025
As we noted last week, the timing of the improvements in mortgage rates meant that the previous survey of mortgage applications from the MBA was unable to capture what would likely prove to be a fairly big uptick in refinance demand. This week's data confirmed it as the refi index jumped to... .. read more..
Construction Appraisal, Verification, HELOC Products; Webcasts and Training; ...
Friday, March 7, 2025
“If you boil a funny bone, it becomes a laughingstock. Now that's humerus.” What isn’t humer…, uh humorous, is a) most states losing an hour Sunday morning, and b) why rates are going down. The word “stagflation” is creeping into analyst’s missives. Mortgage rates and U.S. Treasury yields have fa... .. read more..
Mixed Jobs Data Making For Slightly Stronger Start
Friday, March 7, 2025
Today's jobs report was a mixed bag with the most important number also being the most boring. Headline job creation came in at 151k vs 160k, which is so close as to not even matter. As a result, bonds lost some ground in the first few minutes after the data. Other parts of the report helpe... .. read more..
Decent Recovery as Sentiment Swoons Ahead of Jobs Report
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Decent Recovery as Sentiment Swoons Ahead of Jobs Report Bonds have made it to Friday's jobs report without a meaningful extension of the corrective sell-off that began 2 days ago. That wasn't a given in the middle of today's trading session. Lutnick's comments on tariff exemptions fueled a risk-... .. read more..
Mortgage Rates Higher For 3rd Straight Day
Thursday, March 6, 2025
You may see conflicting news about mortgage rates today, depending on where you look. Weekly surveys, such as Freddie Mac's, are showing a fairly big drop from last week. That was indeed the case over the 5 business days of the weekly survey, but that data is now quite stale. More tim... .. read more..
Loan Trading, Appraisal, Production, MSR Portfolio Tools; HUD to End AFFH Rul...
Thursday, March 6, 2025
“I recently saw a woman at Walmart with March Madness teeth... She was down to the final four.” Risk-free, prepayment-free Treasury rates have approached, or gone below, four percent as the expectations have grown for a slowing U.S. economy (it doesn’t help the ag states that China has cut off bu... .. read more..
Stronger Data and Tariff Delay Causing Weakness
Thursday, March 6, 2025
There are a few moving pieces to the bond market narrative on Thursday. The general backdrop consists of yield curve steepening (fancy words that mean 10yr yields are moving higher relative to 2yr yields, or that 2s are falling more than 10s). Steepening has been the norm since mid-20... .. read more..
2nd Straight Day of Losses. Blame Data or Stocks?
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
2nd Straight Day of Losses. Blame Data or Stocks? We already saw the end of the bond market's 9 day winning streak with yesterday's big mid-day reversal. Today makes it extra official with modestly weaker close. That may not have been our destiny. In fact, at 9:59AM ET, it looked like... .. read more..
Mortgage Rates Move Slightly Higher
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
It's been a great couple of weeks for mortgage rates, largely mirroring the terrible couple of weeks for the stock market. A combination of downbeat econ data and economic concerns helped push investors away from stocks and into bonds (mortgage rates are based on bonds where more demand means low... .. read more..