Why Rates Set Another Record On Week of October 4 At brief intervals during trading days Thursday and Friday last week, single family home loans up to $417,000 were locked at 4% zero points and loans up to $729,750 were locked at 4.25% zero points. Record lows to say the least. Rates at the bottom [...]

PIMCO head Bill Gross just published his June Investment Outlook in which he explores whether developed countries’ debt burdens stunt economic growth and investment returns. His conclusion: the world’s debt obligations mean a likely outcome for investors is 4-6% annualized returns for a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. Regarding Greece, he said that “there [...]

In his March Investment Outlook, Bill Gross head of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond manager, does a mock Q&A as though he was testifying before Congress about the financial crisis, its origins, how long it will last, what needs to be done with the banks, and where people should invest their money. Required reading. Below [...]

According to WSJ, the city of Las Vegas wants to use two million dollars of the economic stimulus for new neon signs. City officials are concerned, since they don’t want to make the city look tacky.

Bond king Bill Gross, head of PIMCO has a simple message in his February Investment Outloook: support asset prices. According to him, that’s the only way we will make it out of this crisis:

Below is an excerpt summarizing bond investment recommendations from the PIMCO head Bill Gross’ January 2009 Investment Outlook.

In our first quarterly report of 2008, we proposed “Ride The Storm” as phrase of the year, and discussed how aggressive Fed rate cuts and higher conforming loan limits might “break the storm clouds” in mortgage and financial markets.

Following the Fed’s announcement last week that they would buy $100b in Fannie and Freddie debt plus buy $500b in Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie mortgage backed bonds, rates on conforming loans dropped by about .625%. If a borrower with 720 credit and a 20% down payment were looking at rates today, a 30yr fixed rate [...]

Markets are even in the hour following the House’s 263-171 approval of the Treasury’s $700b financial sector bailout package, and it passed the Senate yesterday. Now it goes to the White House and President Bush has already said that he would sign it into law. It’s widely expected that Treasury can start purchasing illiquid assets [...]

Fixed and ARM rates are down about .25% in the two weeks since I suggested rates could be in a +/–.25% trading range until Fall. July’s inflation reports released in the past few trading days showed the highest consumer price spike since 1991, when California’s current governor hit his prime with Terminator 2; and the [...]