Dave's Blog

Here is an interesting article referring to a fascinating and thorough Harvard University study (click here for the full study and tables) of The State of the Nation’s Housing.  There is so much to glean from this. I would love to hear your thoughts on these: ·         They show a national exces...

Super-low interest rates continue into territory not seen previously in 2011. FHA no-closing-cost loans have an APR of 4.48%. See more below. Economic news this past week was sour to the point that only the most hardened cheerleaders (those whose livings depend on stock values rising) were claimi...

  Here is an interesting article referring to a fascinating and thorough Harvard University study (click here for the full study and tables) of The State of the Nation’s Housing.  There is so much to glean from this. I would love to hear your thoughts on these points: ·         They show a nation...

The reaction to the death of the world’s most infamous terrorist had a marked positive, initial response in the markets. The Dow futures were up on the news 1.00% and the Asian markets, then open for trading soared. Earlier this morning, the Dow futures had tempered to being up 0.56% as the marke...

The preoccupation this past week with the threatened Federal Government shutdown, averted at the 11th hour, gives way this week to opening salvos in the battle for the 2012 budget. The spending cuts for the remaining 6 months of 2011 (Apr 1– Sept 30 fiscal year end) amounted to $38.5 B, a drop in...

The Jobs Numbers came in Friday with some small improvements. The highlighted number of Non-Farm payroll expanding by 216k is positive. In fact, you can see from the chart below, other than the Mar/Apr/May 2010 period, this is the best increase we’ve seen in 2 years. And while only slightly above...

The Story of the Week was Jobs and it took us both positive and negative on the same report. During the week turmoil in the Middle-East continued to threaten the markets. Oil hovered steady around $100/bbl and stocks climbed. Manufacturing and Retail news all week was positive and Weds and Thursd...

In the past month, we saw inflation numbers tick up just a bit. When the inflation number started getting uncomfortably below the 1.0% level, the Fed stepped up Monetary Easing (see prior QE2 write-ups) and the Fed has been successful in starting us toward their 2.0% target. You can see that we h...

Federal budget years run from October 1 to September 30. The debate in Washington over this $60 billion is about the budget year we are currently in the middle of, ending September 30, 2011. While that budget has a spending number nearing $3 Trillion, there is "only" $440 Billion of “discretionar...

Big news and a lot of second guessing highlighted the past week. But in all the second guessing, interest rates remained in the same tight band they have for going on two months now. And that is GOOD NEWS for mortgage rates in an excellent range with APRs below 5.000% (see below). It started with...