evan@evanhitch.com

Broker and Lender Products, Software, and Services On the PGA Tour, the player who enters Sunday’s final round in first place only goes on to win about one-third of the time. Getting close and finishing the job are two different things. Optimal Blue’s May Market Advantage report found a similar dynamic in mortgage pipelines: Purchase […]

Bonds were reasonably stronger in the overnight session with 10yr yields down roughly 4bps from 4.56 to 4.52. About 8 minutes before the PPI data came out, a series of Trump comments on the Iran war sent oil prices and bond yields higher (new strikes and intent to take Kharg Island). PPI added to the

War Headlines Cause Mid-Day Reversal Bonds started the day inconsequentially weaker and picked up some gains after CPI came in a hair lower than expected at the core level. Just before noon, yields began rising and ultimately hit the 3pm close up a few bps versus yesterday. MBS were down about an eighth of a

There’s been remarkably little change in mortgage rates so far this week. Monday saw a modest increase vs Friday, but since then, there’s been essentially no change. Today’s rates were technically 0.01% lower than yesterday’s, but many lenders were perfectly unchanged. This is an acceptable result given the presence of high stakes economic data and

“Rob, everyone knows that the GSEs (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) don’t use credit scores for loan approval. They use it for pricing. The GSEs have created their own scoring system and it’s just the investors that utilize the score.” True dat. It takes a while to test the impact of credit scores on defaults,

Most understand this, but some forget: CPI numbers on econ calendars are not prices. They’re the change in prices. We bring that up in case anyone thinks today’s core monthly CPI of 0.2 means that prices are lower than last month when the core was 0.4. While it’s a decent monthly number and lower than

Bonds End at Strongest Levels Unlike yesterday, which saw an uneventful open give way to intraday weakness, today’s momentum was mostly friendly. Bonds avoided panicking in the morning hours. Mid-day war-related headlines made for some quick 2-way trading in the noon hour, but yields never went any higher than the AM highs. After sorting out

“Rob, have you heard that retail and DTC lenders have stepped up their training and monitoring of loan officers?” Absolutely. The same granular examination that is applied to borrowers is being applied to LOs, and not only with credit checks and background searches. Originators are expensive, as are leads, and the analysis of LO performance

For the second day in a row , bonds are starting out in modestly stronger territory, but let’s hope we don’t repeat yesterday’s performance. That left yields even higher at the close than they were on Friday afternoon. Today’s overnight gains leave yields in similar territory to yesterday morning. One redeeming technical development is that

Bonds Faded in the Afternoon Despite Oil Price Recovery Oil prices and bond yields started the overnight session higher, but both moved to the lows of the day just after 9:30am. From then on, oil went broadly sideways while bonds sold off gradually. If oil had instead moved higher into the afternoon, we might not