What Happened Last Week?
Highest Mortgage Rates in Nearly 2 Years
Seemingly overnight, the mortgage rate narrative has changed rather drastically, at least in relative terms. While rates had risen gradually from near-all-time lows in August, they were still in a historically low range by the end of December. A week later and we’re at the highest levels in 2 years. In other words, rates weren’t ridiculously far from longer-term highs even before last week. It’s just a bit of a surprise to see how quickly they closed that gap. So WHY did it happen? There are all kinds of ways to quantify the movement, but a chart provides the clearest picture.
Continue reading: Matthew Graham,
Mortgage News Daily 1/7/22)
What’s on the Agenda for this Week?
Three Things
The three areas that have the greatest ability to impact mortgage backed securities (MBS) backend pricing this week are: (1) The Talking Fed, (2) Inflation Nation and (3) Retail Sales.
(1) The Talking Fed: Now that the bond market has moved up its expectations on when the Fed will begin to reduce its massive balance sheet as well as expectations for 3 to 4 rate hikes this cycle and their MBS bond buying program that is part of their pandemic quarter ending in March, it will pay very close attention to speeches by key Fed members this week. Here is this week’s schedule:
01/10: Bostic
01/11: Powell, George, Mester, Bullard
01/12: Atlanta Fed Business Inflation Expectations
01/13: Harker, Brainard, Evans
01/14: Williams
(2) Inflation Nation: There are several inflationary data points this week with CPI and PPI taking center stage with YOY levels expected to break last month’s records.
(3) Retail Sales: Other than CPI and PPI, the most important economic release of the week will be Friday’s Retail Sales data.
Treasury Dump
01/11: 3-year note
01/12: 10-year note
01/13 30 year bond
Market Wrap-up
Overview
There were no major domestic events today.
Across the Pond
Eurozone: November Unemployment Rate 9.2% vs. October’s rate of 9.4%.
On Deck for Tomorrow
Fed Chair Powell, Small Business Optimism, 3-year Treasury note auction.