June 18, 2013
Posted To: MBS Commentary
By the end of this long MBS Commentary post, you'll see that all the MBS/Treasury trauma in May was already laid out by Bernanke on March 20th . Today's FOMC events will now simply be a chance to determine how closely they stick to this script. Keep re-reading this until May's ridiculously brutal sell-off in bond markets is no longer confusing or a source of indignation. It was a source of...Posted To: MND NewsWire
Wells Fargo bank held a conference call on the outlook for the housing market on Tuesday, the first of several planned for 2013. The bank's economists Mark Vitner and Anika Kahn gave a fairly wide-ranging presentation about current economic and housing indicators which was geared primarily toward investors. The GDP has averaged 2.1 percent growth in the quarters since the recession ended four years ago. Vitner...Posted To: MND NewsWire
Mortgage rates have risen sharply over the last month and Freddie Mac , in its monthly Economic and Housing Market Outlook for June, focuses on what happens to the housing market recovery if those increases continue . Recent movements have raised rates from the 3.5 percent range where they have been for most of 2013 to just over 4.0 percent. While many market participants are concerned about the impact of higher...Posted To: MBS Commentary
MBS Live : MBS Afternoon Market Summary The day is winding down with MBS and Treasuries in roughly unchanged territory vs yesterday's latest levels. Morning economic data proved to be a non-event in terms of market movement, and the key motivation of the day looks more like a gentle "letting down of the guard" put in place yesterday afternoon. In other words, prices improved in stocks and bonds...Posted To: Mortgage Rate Watch
Mortgage rates began the day higher , though many lenders repriced in the middle of the day with improved offerings after bond markets began improving (mover lower in rate) into the PM hours. Even after those improvements, most lenders were still in slightly worse shape vs yesterday's latest offerings, but remain fairly close. Conventional 30yr Fixed best-execution rates remained in the 4.0 - 4....Posted To: MND NewsWire
Commercial and multifamily mortgage debt fell by $4.9 billion in the first quarter of 2013. The total debt in the first quarter was $2.41 trillion, down 0.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012 and the first quarterly decrease since the third quarter of 2011. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said that outstanding multifamily mortgage debt increased by $4.1 billion or 0.5 percent in the quarter to a total...Posted To: MBS Commentary
MBS Live : MBS Morning Market Summary Bond markets were weaker overnight, resulting in MBS opening up about 5 ticks weaker vs yesterday's latest levels. Volume and liquidity have been light, but were a bit better than yesterday through the overnight session. If all goes as planned, we should see some iteration of a sideways grind toward the close. If we were trading according to a movie script,...Posted To: Pipeline Press
I am in Colorado this week for the Richey May President & CEO Roundtable meeting, but here is some news regarding Ohio. When we think "The Federal Reserve", we usually think of the Board of Governors and Ben Bernanke, not any one of the 12 reserve banks who make up the system. I bring this up due to a small white paper written by the Cleveland Fed entitled "Policy...Posted To: MND NewsWire
Residential construction starts rose in May while permitting for new construction was down slightly the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development said today. Privately-owned housing starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 914,000, a 6.8 percent increase from April's revised estimate of 856,000. Starts were 28.6 percent higher than a year ago when the rate was 711,000 units...Posted To: MBS Commentary
It would be nigh on impossible for anything that happens today to serve as a mere appetizer to Wednesday's main course: the FOMC Announcement, Economic Projections and Bernanke Press Conference. As we saw on Monday, that doesn't mean that markets are immune from movement. In the grand scheme, however, not only were Monday's moves rather small, but the whole fixed income universe has been...