You don't have to be a political junkie to have found the historic election events very interesting. Major changes are happening and I wanted to share some things to watch for in the aftermath of Tuesday's election. It is timely, clear and insightful. Here are some quick bullets: The names they
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11/04/2010
Wednesday the Fed announced that rates will be kept at the 0-0.25% target rate (no surprise) and that theywill be buying longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of about $75 B per month through June 2011 (also no surprise.) True to form, yields on 10-year treasuries stepped down again today be
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11/04/2010
A big week for the economy is off to the races this morning and interestingly, the Mid-term Elections on Tuesday are NOT the biggest story. We’ll get to those stories in a moment, but first let’s take a look at today’s rates. We are still right at historic lows in residential mortgage rates. Duri
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11/01/2010
Wow, I wouldn't want to have been a trader on the floor of the exchange Thursday, with an unprecedented sell off and recovery in a matter of minutes. Complete with rumors of someone erroneously entering an order with "billion" instead of "million" listed (rumor seems to have been squashed but it
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05/10/2010
As always Spencer provides great real estate information. I look at this in two pieces: 1) Do I (or the borrower involved) have all of the information? What are the consequences (including the unintended consequences) of terminating the contract early? If the consequences are fully understood,
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05/10/2010
Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) made a steady improvement this past week now riding clearly above the territory last held when the Fed was still buying MBS in the open market (through March 31). The banks held onto a part of this gain (believing the strength in MBS to be temporary) but some ben
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05/03/2010
FIVE DAYS LEFT! That includes today, to get a firm, legal contract in place and qualify for the credit (assuming you can close that deal by June 30th.) Contract must me in place by April 30th, this Friday. “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered!” That’s what a property-investor client told me t
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04/26/2010
In the midst of April’s earnings season, and with the Dow at 11,000 for the first time in 18 months (hitting 11,150), who would have thought that a mini stock market sell-off would be the source of interest rate improvements? Remember that the Dow was below 7,000 about March of 2009. But sure e
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04/24/2010
Welcome to Tax Week. I hope your tax return is safely finished and in. That puts us squarely in the middle of April and only 18 days remain to get a valid contract in place to qualify for the $8,000 or $6,500 credit. Congress did heed the advice of realtors when the tax credit was extended thi
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04/17/2010
As the headline suggests, the Fed purchases of Mortgage-Backed Securities came to a screeching halt on Wednesday. The only surprise to me was that the market didn't "bake in" the known-certain drop off in demand prior to the actual date. Sure enough, on Wednesday the markets dropped precipitousl
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04/17/2010