Incidental, Inconsequential Weakness Ahead of Fed Week Bonds began the day in modestly weaker territory and yields are heading out right where they started.  In fact, yields are also right in line with the opening levels from Monday.  This broadly […]

The underlying bond market (which dictates the rates offered by mortgage lenders) weakened moderately overnight.  Weaker bonds equate to higher rates, all else equal.   "Higher rates" is contrary to many media outlets' coverage this week, but there's an important reason. Most news organizations […]

“Rob, we’ve said ‘no’ to more expansion possibilities than ever before. Are you hearing other lenders doing deep dives on LOs and branches and also not seeing a profitable path?” Yes indeedy. Here in Jackson, MS, at the Mississippi Mortgage Banker’s Fall Conference, lenders are not only […]

Bonds began the week with 10yr at 4.07 before rallying down to 4.04 by Monday's close.  Now on Friday, we're opening at 4.06 and we haven't spent much time trading more than a few bps higher or lower than that for the entire week.  Translation: apart from yesterday's attempt to challenge the 4.0% […]

Very Calm Reaction But Not Too Surprising One could argue that CPI is the next biggest potential market mover after the jobs report. With that in mind, it might seem surprising that MBS are heading out the door roughly unchanged and 10yr yields are down […]

Today's inflation report (the Consumer Price Index or CPI) certainly had a chance to create volatility for rates, but things ended up staying fairly calm.  There are multiple subheadings of data that the bond market cares about when it come to CPI. Most of them were in line with expectations, or […]

It's an interesting morning for economic data and the bond market's reaction.  At face value, CPI was mostly in line with forecasts, but unrounded numbers were a bit hot (i.e. core monthly CPI was 0.346%, almost high enough to make for a 0.4 vs 0.3 reading). Additionally, monthly headline […]

“All I know is what I read in the papers,” Will Rogers quipped. In news in the papers from our Census Bureau, AI use at large companies is in decline. “A dip in corporate AI adoption isn't a great sign for an industry hellbent on world domination.” I am good at misunderestimating things, […]

Helpful Data and Treasury Auction Set High Bar For CPI Another fairly straightforward day for the bond market with friendly econ data and a strong 10yr Treasury auction both helping push yields lower. If it seems like the size of the miss in the PPI data […]

Wednesday brought the first of this week's two key inflation reports. While the Producer Price Index (PPI) is the lesser of the two in terms of potential impact on rates, it came in far enough below expectations to make for a measurable improvement. The catch is that the improvement in question […]