Decent Gains Remain Intact; Stock Market Contribution is a Wild Card The rescheduled release of the September jobs report played out exactly as we expected in terms of bond market impact. Volumes surged to the highest levels since the late October Fed […]

Yesterday, we discussed the fact that mortgage rates were heading into Thursday with a disadvantage (for most lenders, anyway). This had to do with the fact that lenders prefer to avoid changing rates in the middle of the day (unless bond market movement is big enough to force their hands) and the […]

“Here we are, a week away from Thanksgiving, and I’m in Kansas City. My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes, but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.” The CFPB isn’t going away “cold turkey” but yesterday’s personnel move was a reminder that there are clever people in […]

It's shaping up to be a "no whammies" sort of morning for the bond market.  There's no denying that the jobs report was a highly tradeable event. The 30 minutes of volume following the release was by far the highest since the October 29th Fed announcement. But that volume has been fairly well […]

Fed Minutes Push Yields Higher As expected, the recent raft of hawkish Fed speakers foreshadowed (whether intentionally or coincidentally) a hawkish message in today's Fed minutes. At issue: "many" meeting participants felt that a December cut would NOT […]

It was a complicated day for mortgage rates.  Officially, at the time of this article, the average top tier 30yr fixed rate is a hair lower than it was yesterday.  But rates are based on bonds and bonds are telling a different story. In the wake of the release of the minutes from the most recent […]

As I type these words, I am sitting in front of one of Chuck Berry’s early residences in St. Louis. STL has a good musical reputation, a fine mortgage association, a Fed that puts out great research, and has many nice neighborhoods. But to call this specific area where I am sitting a […]

Correlation between stocks and bonds is hit and miss depending on other factors. Before the age of more aggressive Fed intervention, it was more common to see yields move in concert with stocks. These days, Fed accommodation expectations can result in the opposite correlation.  That said, there […]

Modest Gains After Mid-Day Volatility With only a few exceptions, bonds have been a rudderless ship during the government shutdown. With the backlogged data returning in a slow and uncertain fashion, rudder repairs are similarly slow. In today's case, bonds […]

With economic data being the most consistent source of motivation for rates, the market has been eager for it to return with the reopening of the government. While some higher profile reports have been rescheduled for the coming days (i.e. on Thursday, we'll get the jobs report that we were […]