Posted To: MBS Commentary

It was a fairly anticlimactic trading day on which to hit the highest closing prices in the history of the 4.5 MBS. With limited data to either douse the dreams or fuel the fires of Dubai-induced flights to quality, bonds were forced to turn to Chicago PMI as the sole appetizer to a more robust offering of post-holiday fare later in the week. And as is the case in many households, sometimes the most anticipated part of Thanksgiving is the week of leftovers that follows. Whatever the case, the rest of your charts this week will not be the orderly movement of decreasing volatility within a range as seen below. The theme even plays out in the long term chart as we can see wider and more volatile ranges evolving into the more narrow and contained rally that has defined recent months. More of a…(read more)

Posted To: Voice of Housing

Treasury is becoming impatient with servicer performance despite their investments and success with processing trial loan modifications. The program was/is targeted to help 3-4 million homeowners that were distressed or where imminent default within 60 days was likely. Treasury provided servicers with real economic incentive to aggressively pursue and negotiate loan modifications with the prospect of an up-front fee of $1,000 for each modification ($1,500 if the borrower was current) and $1,000 a year in which the borrower makes their modified payments. Consider that net income to servicers was $161 in 2008, per MBA Cost Study, and you’ve got one heck of an opportunity to make a lot of money while “doing good” as a servicer. Servicers have hired thousands of people over the…(read more)

Posted To: MND NewsWire

HUD and the Treasury Department are taking another crack at moving its foreclosure prevention efforts from concept to reality. And now it is adding "shame" to its list of weapons. The Treasury Department announced today that it intends to increase pressure on lenders and servicers to move borrowers from trial loan modifications into actual restructured loans. The action comes amid reports that the administration's $75 billion Making Homes Affordable Program (HAMP) is floundering. While the government has been trumpeting the success of the trial modification program - some 650,000 troubled borrowers had entered the program by the end of October - only a very small percentage of those borrowers have transitioned into a permanent loan modification. It is estimated that November figures…(read more)

Posted To: MBS Commentary

After more volatile morning movements, MBS have improved in a very narrow range into the afternoon with the 4.5 up 3 ticks from Friday's close to 101-19. Closing at this level would constitute an all time high. Tsy's meanwhile had been negative almost all morning, but as you can see in the chart below, 10yr yields broke through 3.215 and used that same level as support to make an assault on the lowest yields since May at 3.20. If yields find reason to drop below 3.2, there wouldn't be any informative resistance until May's low at 3.12. As such, we wouldn't expect to see a meaningful push lower in yields into the 3pm marking Stocks have continued to "play ball" with bond rallies with both the S&P and Dow slightly negative on the day. The S&P had gone as…(read more)

Posted To: Mortgage Rate Watch

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend…now it’s back to work. Last week ended on a flat note with mortgage backed securities closing basically where they opened Friday morning. Bolume was extremely light but that was expected as the markets were only open for a half day. The data calendar is very light today with the only report being the Chicago PMI which is a survey of businesses conditions around the Chicago region. Readings above 50 indicate expansion while readings below 50 indicate contraction. Last month’s survey registered the first above 50 reading since the summer of 2008 with a reading of 54.2. Expectations called for this month’s report to come in slightly lower at 53.0. The release indicated that business conditions around the Chicagoland area continue…(read more)

Posted To: MND NewsWire

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is moving to reduce risks to its single-family insurance fund through new regulations proposed today. The changes, announced by FHA Commissioner David Stevens, include increasing the net worth requirements of FHA-approved lenders from the current level of $250,000 to a minimum of $1 million within the first year after the rules become effective and to at least $2.5 million within three years of rule implementation. The changes would ensure that FHA lenders are sufficiently capitalized to meet potential needs so that FHA can mitigate losses from and risks to the insurance fund. Under a second proposed change, lenders seeking approval to originate, underwrite, or service FHA loans must meet the eligibility criteria for a supervised or non-supervised mortgagee…(read more)

Posted To: MBS Commentary

The FN 4.0 is -0-01 at 100-09 yielding 3.98% and the FN 4.5 is currently +0-00 at 102-16 yielding 4.198%. The secondary mortgage market current coupon is now 3.96%. The CC yield is +73bps/10yr TSY yield and +63bps/10yr swap rate. "Rate sheet influential" yield spreads (over benchmarks) are marginally improved as Fed buying has easily eaten up modest originator selling, $700mm and even a few 6.0s…meanwhile fast money MBS day traders have focused their strategies "up in coupon". Price action has been sideways all morning with only 6,500 TBA MBS trades so far today. Below is the FN 4.5 two day…notice prices have held to a tight range all morning. Zooming out, you can how the rate of MBS price appreciations has slowed over the past three sessions. Lots of mortgage market…(read more)

Posted To: Community Commentary

Have any of you thought about why we refer to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday? The term "Black Friday" was originated in Philadelphia during the 1960's. It was used to reference the unusual amount of traffic that was observed on the day after Thanksgiving. More recently, merchants and the media have used it, instead, to refer to the beginning of the period in which retailers go from being in the red (i.e., posting a loss on the books) to being in the black (i.e., turning a profit). We get a fair amount of calls from brokers and small mortgage bankers about the idea of partnering with a community bank. Early in my career, I had the opportunity to partner with several banks. My team and I contributed the knowledge, systems and relationships. The bank provided the capital…(read more)

Posted To: Pipeline Press

An uncle once told me, "I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me. And the second one didn't." In a story from Reuters, both Deutsche Bank and France's BNP Paribas SA separately sued Bank of America last Wednesday , "claiming that the largest U.S. bank breached its obligations on a total of more than $1.7 billion of mortgage-related transactions." Both lawsuits relate to Ocala Funding LLC , a funding vehicle used by Taylor, Bean & Whitaker . TBW used Colonial Bank for warehouse lending, which Bank of America sued in August. Deutsche Bank accused BofA of breach of contract for failing to safeguard more than $1.25 billion of cash and mortgage loans from deals in 2007 and 2008. In the other lawsuit, BNP Paribas Mortgage Corp said BofA refused…(read more)

Posted To: MBS Commentary

I can imagine that bonds stepped on the scale this AM much the same way as I did. Yes, the holiday's were good while they lasted, but things may be a bit too overweight this AM. If you weren't around for the rousing Friday that was, the main event was the Dubai Drama in which the country essentially couldn't pay it's bills on time. Given the billions of dollars on their tab, the debt markets sort of took notice–at least as much as they were able on a Black Friday. These next few longer term tsy charts show the flight to quality that ensued, among a few other things… 10 yr tsy yields Quite a lot of perspective offered here as we see the resistance and then THE RESISTANCE and though 3.0 feels a bit distant, perhaps it could then be THE RESISTANCE! In other words, yes, yields…(read more)