Manufacturing -ISM Manufacturing Index 51.6 -Below 50 is contraction, above 50 is expansion -Previous was 50.6, expectations for today were 50.5 -The employment component was up but new orders were down. -This data is produced by the Institute for Supply Management from a survey of more than 300 manufacturing firms. Construction Spending – Construction Spending [...]

Jobs ADP Jobs +38,000 ADP Jobs is an early indicators of BLS which will be out Friday. ADP is weighted to private sector jobs and with public sector jobs declining this is not good news. Mortgage Applications Week-to-week changes in applications last week – Purchase Index – 0.0 % – Refinance Index -5.7 % – [...]

Mortgage bonds opened today up, extending the past 10 days of gains, but have since retreated (FNMA 30yr 4% coupon -9 basis points) as bond traders take some profits. Still, two weeks of gains have brought rates down near 2011 lows achieved March 16. Today’s ISM Manufacturing Index fell slightly to 60.4 in April from [...]

Rates typically rise when inflation is a threat. This happens because rates are tied to bonds. Investors pay a certain price for a bond, and based on that price, they get a certain percentage of that bond’s value paid to them each year. That percentage is called a yield (or a rate) and it has [...]

If this morning’s mortgage bond selloff holds (MBS currently down 47 basis points), rates will rise about .2% today. The Egypt revolution was helping rates in the past couple trading days despite better GDP Friday (+3.2% for 4Q2010) and higher inflation in Chicago-area manufacturing yesterday, but the best manufacturing report since 2004 today put bond [...]

Stocks and rates are up as investors look forward to economic improvement in 2011. Rates were a lot higher to begin the trading day, but bonds have since recovered a bit—if the recovery holds, rates will stop rising for the day. Late last week the Chicago ISM (Institute of Supply Managers) stats soared in December [...]

Mortgage Fraud Categories Mortgage Asset Research Institute (MARI) states that reported incidents of mortgage fraud and misrepresentation by professionals in the mortgage industry are continuing to climb and increased by 7% from 2008 to 2009. Is it more fraud or better reporting of previously undiscovered fraud? Either way, MARI believes that mortgage fraud is “significantly [...]

Putin’s Russian Mortgage Stimulus Any weapons race with Russia doesn’t receive the publicity it did 30 years ago. But whatever you call someone who originates loans in Russia (brokers?) received some good news last week, when Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the government will help to lower the mortgage rates investing more than [...]

Jargon Watch I had my standard “beginning of the year” meeting with the family. My soon-to-be 18-yr old son reported that this time in his life is “unprecedented” for him, and that he is working on his “exit strategy” from high school. He then said that this would be an “historic opportunity” for me to [...]

The scene from this movie was obviously a horrible period in history, but this take on it cracks me up every time: My uncle used to say, “Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.” Or bigger, for that matter. Speaking of big, the numbers yesterday show that the Fed’s purchases dipped [...]