Yes, there was/is an election which is certainly a discussion topic here in Dallas, but regardless of the results, many people who don’t own homes want to buy one, and people who do may be facing life changes and could use personal advice. Here’s a trend: Homeowners who won’t give up a 3 percent mortgage are becoming landlords instead. Do you have a product (and underwriting) to help them at every stage? Another reason for personal consulting with borrowers: A fixed-rate mortgage may remain stable for thirty years, but the cost of owning that home does not. Property taxes continue to rise,…
There are several moving parts to today's trading levels, but the TL;DR is that bonds are holding modest gains so far despite some 2-way volatility. The overnight session started out with the strongest gains of the day, clearly coinciding with a stock market swoon. Stock prices and bond yields bounced higher when the senate majority was called around 11:30pm ET. Bonds quickly unwound most of the overnight gains before stabilizing sideways at slightly stronger levels. Stocks have been rising ever since. In other words, there was no magical relief in the bond market about political…
Early Strength Thwarted by Data and Resilience in Equities There are several ways to view today's bond market movement and none of them are terribly important. Sharply lower oil prices had a small, friendly impact on bonds early in the day following more hopeful war-related headlines, but context is important. A 3-4 dollar drop in oil merely got 10yr yields back in line with overnight lows. In other words, there's still precious little correlation here. Oil reversed course fairly quickly and bonds got hit harder by strong JOLTS data (job openings and labor turnover survey). Correlation with…
Well... they can't all be winners. It seems as if rates could do no wrong over the past 3 days with each marking the lowest level in more than a month for the average top tier 30yr fixed rate. Today wasn't a winner, but it wasn't exactly bad. Apart from the past 3 days, today would still have been the lowest rate in more than a month, and it was only 0.03% higher to boot. So what happened? First off, when we're talking about a 0.03% change day-over-day, it's not particularly important to investigate causation because that level of movement falls in the "incidental" category. Nonetheless,…
Lender and Broker Products, Services, and Software Most lenders are still catching up on tech. Here’s your chance to get ahead. In this report, Plaid and National Mortgage News asked 128 lenders how they’re handling today’s pressures. Most still rely on manual processes, and only 15 percent have optimized their tech strategy. Read the report to see what it takes to streamline verifications with single-source validation, speed up the origination process with real-time data, and stop fraud sooner without overhauling your stack. See where you stand… and how to get ahead. “Help Shape the Future…
Bonds were sideways to slightly weaker overnight, but they're rallying back to unchanged levels in the 8am hour following favorable headlines regarding the Iran war. Iranian officials floated the possibility of concessions in exchange for sanctions relief and separate headlines suggested Washington approved a draft MOU. Certainly not the first time we've seen such headlines, but oil prices are clearly responding, and much like yesterday, bonds seem at least somewhat willing to start rekindling their old fling with oil price correlation.
Little-Moved by Huge Drop in Oil and Tech Stocks Bonds were technically stronger at 4pm ET, but just barely. Over the past 2 sessions, we've seen Treasury yields noticeably disconnect from the prevailing correlation with tech stocks. This began after the opening bell last Friday and mostly continued today. Bonds were generally improving while the NASDAQ was higher for most of the day and then sold off starting at 1pm when tech stocks saw their biggest losses (i.e. the opposite of the prevailing correlation). Part of the credit for the bond selling goes to the market's takeaway from…
It was a perfectly fine day for mortgage rates to start the new week. The underlying bond market improved modestly, drawing on a combination of sharply lower oil prices and another drop in tech-related stocks. While it's true that oil prices haven't had a reliable impact on bonds/rates over the past month, today's drop was big enough that is probably helped to some extent, especially when we consider some headwinds created by updated borrowing estimates released by the U.S. Treasury today. Once per quarter, Treasury updates estimated Treasury auction amounts. Treasuries are the foundation of…
Sometimes you and your teammates have different priorities. I head to Dallas tomorrow for a private mortgage event, where the priorities will probably be mostly aligned. Besides the election, and perhaps the inflation-beating Costco’s Thanksgiving meal, the profitability of HELOCs, 2nd mortgages, and equity products in general will definitely be a discussion topic. In the past much of this product (85 percent by some estimates) was held by banks. Now that is estimated to be down to 65 percent, and non-banks of all shapes and sizes are coming on strong, market-share-wise. Besides having decent…
Bonds were initially a hair weaker at the start of the overnight session, but rallied gradually after that. The sharpest gains arrived at the 9:30am NYSE open, suggesting money manager reallocations and "new month" trades. ISM Manufacturing hit 30 minutes later and the first reaction was modest bounce toward slightly higher yields and slightly higher stock prices. Perhaps the most notable development is that stocks are back up to Friday morning's levels even as bonds remain 4-5bps lower compared to the same baseline.
Headlines and excerpts are sourced from Mortgage News Daily. All rights remain with the original publisher.
