evan@evanhitch.com

Roughly Unchanged After Gradual Weakness Bonds ended the day roughly unchanged despite this morning’s stronger start. With the S&P falling back to the lows of the day, we can’t really blame asset allocation trading between stocks and bonds. It’s easier to blame a mid-day surge in fuel prices (especially after 11am) which may have been […]

In a month where bonds have made a visible reconnection with fuel prices thanks to the Iran war resurgence, there have been several notable departures in the correlation. Today is the latest example. If we’re splitting hairs, we can still observe yields and fuel prices generally moving in the same direction overnight, but when fuel

I was speaking with a friend recently, and I asked her what she does for lunch. She replied, “Zentangle.” Yup, it’s a thing, something that wasn’t around when I was a kid. When I was a kid, people living on the street were known as homeless. Now the term is the “unhoused.” When I was

The term “crack spread” is quickly becoming mainstream–especially over the past few weeks. It’s more of a concept than a specific metric, but it most frequently refers to the margin between input and output costs for fuel (gas, diesel, etc). Petro-nerds seem to like the 3-2-1 crack spread, which covers both gas and diesel (3

Nearly every lender is at least learning about AI, but on the flip side there are things like New York’s ban on data centers. Lenders and vendors are not the only ones riding the tech wave, and no LO wants to be behind their client in tech knowledge. Consumers are now researching affordability, neighborhoods, and

While some news stories suggest that rates are the highest in 11 months today, that’s not quite true. The highest rates of the year were seen on July 13th and May 19th when our 30yr fixed index hit 6.75%. The index was at 6.68% today, up from 6.64% yesterday. Any news regarding “highest rates since

Ultimately Uneventful Despite Modest Weakness Bonds lost ground modestly today with the ultimate damage being roughly an eighth of a point for MBS and less than a bp for 10yr yields. The selling was led by the short end of the curve (i.e. 2yr yields were up 1.5bps). There wasn’t any obvious catalyst apart from

Mortgage rates moved lower again today following another lower-than-expected reading on an inflation report. Yesterday’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) had a bigger impact on the underlying bond market, but today’s Producer Price Index (PPI) wasn’t far behind. Additionally, bonds did a better job of holding onto the improvement into the afternoon hours. This allowed mortgage

Wednesday’s Gains Had More Staying Power Than Tuesday’s Both Tuesday’s CPI and Wednesday’s PPI came in much lower than expected. Both resulted in fairly big bond rallies. Whereas Tuesday’s rally faded gradually after the initial pop, Wednesday’s rally continued at a moderate pace as the day progressed. The only trade off was that the initial

The Producer Price Index (PPI) is not normally a huge market mover, but it has its moments of moderate impact. Today is such a moment as PPI did its best to mimic yesterday’s sharply lower CPI. There were also big revisions to previous months which brought annual PPI a full 1.0% lower from last month’s