evan@evanhitch.com

Some Bond-Specific Weakness in The Afternoon Oil and Treasury yields were almost perfectly correlated for almost the entire week. Friday afternoon was an exception. Oil continued sideways to slightly lower while yields rose a bit. Overall damage was negligible, but it was interesting nonetheless. While there was no clear news or event behind the move, […]

Slightly Stronger But There’s a Catch Bonds had a decent day with MBS up more than a quarter point and 10yr yields down 3bps to 4.54+.  While that adds some emphasis to the rejection of a technical breakout above 4.59%, we can’t really conclude that it happened for any bond-specific reasons. In fact, we’re forced

Mortgage rates were rapidly approaching 10-month highs as of yesterday afternoon. They managed a friendly bounce today, but it was fairly small with the average lender dropping 0.03% to 6.5% for a top-tier 30yr fixed scenario. One reason for caution is that the rate improvement looks to be dependent on oil price volatility after this

This morning, we head to Los Angeles, the site of the fires in the Pacific Palisades area in January 2025. Governor Gavin Newsom recently announced that FEMA approved California’s request to extend critical disaster assistance for Los Angeles fire survivors. More than 18,000 structures were destroyed. Seventy percent of those families don’t have a place

Bonds are starting the day just a hair stronger versus yesterday’s close and there are three ways to look at it. At the most basic level, the move is so small that it doesn’t deserve any explanation (i.e. we’re close enough to unchanged to say “nothing new is happening”). But given the recent resurgence of

More War-Related Weakness, But With a Supportive Bounce Bonds officially closed at the highest yields in more than a month. At one point just before the noon hour, the 10yr was just over 4.59, but ultimately moved back to 4.56. That’s only about 1bp higher than yesterday’s latest levels (which feels like a win compared

Mortgage rates have moved higher at a moderate pace over the past 2 days as tensions between The U.S. and Iran see a resurgence. As far as the underlying bond market is concerned, most of the damage was done yesterday. But today’s news added emphasis when Trump declared the ceasefire to be over. Rates are

STRATMOR Group has opened participation for its 2026 Compensation Connection® Study, providing mortgage-specific insights into compensation components, incentive plan structures, compensation percentiles, and more. (Compensation Connection focuses exclusively on mortgage banking, with benchmark comparisons by lender type, size, region, and national averages, plus three-year trending for many metrics. This year’s study includes four modules: Retail

Iran-related headlines have jumped back to the realm of relevance this week and Wednesday morning’s overnight session kicked things up another notch. Trump declared the ceasefire to be over and is currently saying peace deal negotiations may not even continue. Markets definitely reacted with oil and Treasury yields spiking overnight. The interesting part is the

Hormuz Back in The News Iran has attacked a few cargo ships recently and there are repercussions. The peace deal looks to be on shakier ground over the past 24 hours with both sides talking tough on the internet. Just before 3pm, the U.S. referred to Iran’s actions as unacceptable and revoked the license that allowed the sale