Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday! Interest rates remain in record territory. The market softened a bit on Friday, but this appears to be more of a light, holiday-trading effect rather than a trend. Because of today’s holiday, the markets were closed early on Friday. And the inauguration on T
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01/19/2009
Good morning! The global economy continues to plumb new records and some that are fairly old. To wit, the Bank of England lowered its targeted rate to 1.5% last week from 2.0%. It has never, since its 1694 creation in been below 2.0%, not through the Great Depression, or world wars, but it is t
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01/12/2009
Happy New Year 2009! What a great way to start the year, with mortgage interest rates still right at 50-year lows and Mortgage-Backed Securities in demand with announced purchases just starting and an announced $500 billion still to come throughout the next weeks and months. This is on top of t
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01/12/2009
Why does today's proposed bailout loan to Chrysler and GM cause interest rates to turn to the worse? There are a couple of reasons. First, the money that will be used to lend to the auto companies is coming right out of the money that otherwise had been set aside to help mortgage backed securit
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12/19/2008
Tuesday the Fed made an historic announcement that their Open Market Committee dropped the target for the Fed Funds rate down to a range of 0.0% to 0.25%. The Fed Target has never before been this low. Mortgage Backed Securities are right now trading very high (good for lower long-term interest
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12/19/2008
Hope your day becomes sunny and bright. Mortgage rates certainly are sunny and bright. We are seeing the range of rates for various projects fall on both sides of the 5.0% point now. Rates are at a multi-year low close to 50 year lows in fact! (See the charts below.) And Signet has relations
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12/19/2008
Big actions continue to impact Mortgage-Backed Securities, and first, let's talk about the Treasury and their desire to jump start housing with 4.5% mortgage rates. I know this has the media all a-twitter. It was a story that broke in Thursday's Wall Street Journal article (click here) and was
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12/08/2008
We’ll have to call it Green Tuesday from now on – or Fat Tuesday comes to November. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was the announcement by the Federal Reserve of actions that are bringing back demand to the Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) Market. 30 year fixed rates for conforming loans are
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12/01/2008
Happy Thanksgiving and I hope your short week is productive and then filled with warm family memories. Here are some of the key actions we are watching: Washington activity continues to dominate the economic landscape. The Treasury, Fed and FDIC decided late last night to further back CITI with
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11/24/2008
Well the stock market continues to tumble and surprise with bad news. Last week I saw something I had never seen before – the targeted price of a stock (GM in this case which makes it all the more unusual) was in an analysts report projected to be $0.00. That’s right, nothing. A couple of wee
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11/21/2008