“Last year I joined a support group for procrastinators. We haven't met yet.” Lenders and vendors are certainly meeting here in Austin. What’s going on out there? There’s endurance. Congratulations to my son Robbie as today is his 1,000th podcast, the link to which is posted at the bottom […]

Bonds were weaker overnight as markets calmed down a bit after yesterday's DeepSeek frenzy.  The 8:20am CME open brought in just a bit of buying, but there's been better selling since the 8:30am Durable Goods data.  The -2.2 vs 0.8 f'cast might look like a good outcome for bonds at first glance, […]

Bonds Seek Lower Yields, But not Too Deeply Yet On Friday night, a vast majority of market watchers had never heard of the Chinese AI company DeepSeek. By mid morning today, it was all a vast majority of market watchers could talk about.  DeepSeek's list […]

There are two distinct patterns of behavior when it comes to rates interacting with stocks.  The first could be called the "conventional wisdom" pattern, which holds that investors move money between stocks and bonds, thus creating a correlation between stock prices and rates (as investors buy […]

“Dr. Oz says rubbing coffee grounds on your naked body will get rid of cellulite. Apparently, you can't do this in the downtown Austin Starbucks.” Here in Austin at the MBA’s IMB conference, some of the informal talk is about the reasons why U.S. home sales in 2024 fell to their lowest level […]

NVDA has obviously been THE biggest driver of prevailing bull market in stocks. In 2024, its market cap increased by just over 2 trillion dollars. Following relatively viral overnight news regarding China's DeepSeek AI, NVDA is currently on track to obliterate the record for the worst day of […]

Modest Gains Make For an Uneventful Week If bonds had continued to sell off today, it would have made the week slightly more interesting, but even then, we would still be well under the high yields seen last week.  As it stands, the combination of this […]

While there were only 4 business days instead of the customary 5, it's been an intensely boring week for mortgage rates.  Tuesday started out right where Friday left off. From there, Thursday brought the only noticeable change with the average lender moving up to the highest levels in just over a […]

It's no mystery that 2024 hasn't been a stellar year for home sales and many other housing metrics. Today's release of December's Existing Home Sales from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) confirmed that.   Bad news first: with December in the books, 2024 goes down as the worst year for […]

The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) weekly mortgage application survey showed a modest decrease in refinance applications and an even more modest increase in purchase applications. At these levels of movement, it's just as fair to say that applications generally held steady. That's a good […]