Good News and Bad News About Today's Selling
Good News and Bad News About Today's Selling The bad news is that bonds resumed their weaker tendencies today with 10yr yields moving back up into the 4.6's. Culprits included stronger economic data, hawkish Fed comments, and possibly the fact that the previous day's gains were driven by corrective short-covering. The good news is a bit of stre...
Mortgage Rates Higher Today, But Not Quite as High as Tuesday
Tuesday marked the highest mortgage rates since November, capping a mini surge that began after last week's inflation data. After a moderate improvement yesterday, rates moved back up toward (but thankfully not above) the recent highs today. Financial markets reacted to stronger economic data and comments from Federal Reserve officials regarding the possibility of no Fed rate cuts in 2024 a...
Bonds Are Back to Their Old Ways
After the best day in a month and a half on Wednesday, the bond market is back to its recent habit of selling off and moving toward higher yields. It looked the losses were set to be more modest at the beginning of the day, but things got worse after Fed's Williams delivered a bit of a hawkish shift. Williams was the one who pushed back against last week's CPI report, saying recen...
MSR Execution, VOI, Post-Closing Audit, Client Acquisition Tools; May Training and Events
What loan officer hasn’t had a memorable co-signing experience? Some more so than others. Along those lines, if you head to Disneyland or Disneyworld, and find bone chips or ashes on the floor of your favorite ride, it is probably not an accident. Nor is eking out a gain, or at least breaking even, in residential lending an accident. At the Great River Conference in Memphis, much of the informat...
Too Soon to Say Higher Yields Are Bringing Buyers?
Too Soon to Say Higher Yields Are Bringing Buyers? Bonds enjoyed their best day in more than a month and a half on Wednesday, which can't help but beg the question: why? Days like today require a process of elimination and some guesswork. We don't have a big, obvious market mover in play in terms of economic data or headlines. Moving down...
Mortgage Rates Finally Win One
Mortgage rates moved lower today after hitting the highest levels since mid November yesterday. Some lenders were down as much as an eighth of a percent, which is on the bigger side for a day-over-day change for conventional 30yr fixed rates. As nice as it is to see a big improvement, it's important to understand the nature of the move. Even when rates are spiking consistently h...
Non-QM, Verification, Fraud Prevention, Buy Before You Sell Products; STRATMOR on Borrower Satisfaction
“We base our business model on lots of things, but not on our ability to predict rates.” Remember when there used to be “a flight to quality” when there was world unrest, and investors put their money into dollar-denominated assets? Long gone. Even if one knew exactly what was going to happen in the United States, how can anyone, including the Federal Reserve, predict much of anything give...
Token Bounce
The bond market is getting off to a stronger start today despite an absence of any new motivations in the news or economic calendar. In fact, the calendar is essentially empty when it comes to market movers. While we could make a case for some friendly spillover from European bonds, and while the timing and correlation line up fairly well, it was arguably US bond markets leading the ch...
Mortgage App Volume Ticks Higher Despite Higher Rates
Mortgage interest rates rose for the second straight week, and so did the volume of mortgage applications. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said its Market Composite Index, a measure of that volume, increased 3.3 percent on an adjusted basis from one week earlier and 4.0 percent before adjustment. The Refinance Index increased 0.5 percent from the previous week and was 11 percent h...
Mortgage Rates Back to 7.5%
The bad times keep rolling for mortgage rates with the average conventional 30yr fixed rate back up to 7.5% according to our daily index. This is quite a bit higher than the major weekly indices for a few reasons. First, the weekly indices haven't been updated for the current week yet. When that changes, because they are averages, they'll also include several days in the past whe...