News

As far as financial markets are concerned, a green Christmas is better than anything Bing Crosby could have crooned about. Green is the color that flashes when markets are improving or when interest rates are falling. Green, for lack of a better word, is good. For mortgage rates, it’s been an especially difficult year.  They’ve…
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Heading into this week, we knew that Thursday’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) would be critically important. It did not disappoint. CPI is one of two key inflation reports in the US.  PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) is the other big index, but because CPI comes out 2 weeks earlier, it gets almost all of the market’s…
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The Federal Reserve hiked rates by 0.75% this week and 30yr fixed mortgage rates moved moderately higher.  Interestingly enough, those two things are fairly unrelated. The Fed Funds Rate (the thing the Fed “hikes” when you hear about the Fed hiking rates) applies to overnight loans among large financial institutions.  It’s important, to be sure, but it…
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The average 30yr fixed mortgage rate officially moved over 7% this week according to major weekly surveys, but mortgage rates actually moved lower! Why the discrepancy?  It’s fairly simple. Weekly rate surveys lag reality.  For instance, most of the responses for Freddie Mac’s survey (the most widely cited among news organizations) are in by Tuesday,…
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There’s no way to sugarcoat the situation in the bond market and, by extension, the mortgage and housing markets. Rates have risen at a nearly unprecedented pace, ushering in one of the quickest cooldowns on record. One of the only ways to find hope in this environment is to imagine that bad news is finite.…
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Unsurprisingly, the market remains intently focused on inflation as the key driver of Fed policy and rate volatility. This week, the biggest inflation report combined with more UK market drama to push rates to another 20yr high. The UK doesn’t typically factor into our assessment of market movement in the US, but the past 3 weeks…
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The resilience of the economy is a matter of debate with different cases to be made depending on the data. But when it comes to the Fed’s favorite reports, the data hasn’t given them any reason to go easy on rates. The Fed doesn’t directly dictate mortgage rates, but it does set the Fed Funds…
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There was no rest for weary rate watchers after last week’s rout. This week turned out to be even more volatile. UK in The Spotlight (Still) UK issues are still having a big impact.  Last week’s rate spike was most readily attributable to market panic over a budgetary decision in The UK.  Panic remained on…
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