We’re back traveling and packing for the plethora of conferences. Packing and intellect sometimes collide: for the life of me, I can’t seem to grasp this simple video on the moves of how to fold a t-shirt in under two seconds. (It is worth waiting out the ad; show it to your kids.) The Fed doesn’t set mortgage rates, but the markets seem focused on its every move and opinion since its mandate of maximum employment, price stability, and steady inflation is always precarious. The Fed is often a topic on The Big Picture, but this week Katie Sweeney, EVP of Broker Strategy and Advocacy at Rocket Mortgage, is on to discuss the moves on the trigger leads bill with its implications… a big win for the MBA and our biz. Speaking of that organization, the MBA’s Marina Walsh, CMB, reminded me of a its just-released home equity lending study that should be of interest to any originator or company who wants to understand that market and borrower, and how to tap into that business. (Today’s podcast can be found here and Sponsored by Total Expert, the purpose-built customer engagement platform trusted by hundreds of modern financial institutions. Total Expert turns customer data into actionable insights that help lenders engage and guide consumers through complex financial decisions. Hear an interview with BeSmartee’s Tim Nguyen on why modern mortgage lenders need configurable POS solutions that are fast, flexible, and built to adapt in any market.) Products, Services, and Software for Lenders and Brokers

Mortgage rates have barely budged after Monday with the day-over-day change failing to exceed 0.02% on any given day. But today’s budging happened to bring the average 30yr fixed rate to another 10-month low.  Lenders are in the mid 6% range for top tier scenarios. Economic data is one of the common influences for the bonds that underly rate movement. Today’s only somewhat significant report was the weekly jobless claims data.  It would have needed to fall very far from forecasts in order to have a big impact. While it was higher than expected, the “miss” was too small to matter. Today’s improvement has more to do with yesterday’s late day gains in the bond market. Today’s trading has erased those gains, but the market hasn’t moved enough for most lenders to go to the trouble of changing their rates. The implication is that tomorrow morning’s rates would be just a hair higher if the bond market held perfectly steady overnight.

Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to pitch public stock offerings for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The company also added a new marketing executive to drive growth, with current expansion coming after it also secured an origination purchase deal last month.

One loan sale is planned for Wednesday, while the other is tentatively happening in September. All-in-all, the two offerings are worth close to $1 billion.

MBA urges GSEs to drop tri-merge credit rule, calling it outdated and costly as FHFA weighs broader credit reporting and scoring reforms.

While the company exceeded analyst expectations on several fronts, its Q3 outlook includes softer revenue and a slide back into negative EBITDA.

As the MMLA event wrapped up in Michigan, a large number of people around the nation (and some from here) are gearing up to travel to (or within) California to attend the California MBA’s Western Secondary and then FAMP’s annual convention in Orlando. The number of conferences is skyrocketing. Numbers are a big part of our industry, and this morning’s MBA application data reflected what I am hearing from MLOs around the nation. (Today’s L1 2PM ET interview features veteran broker Brian Benjamin discussing what he’s seeing.) Joel Kan writes, “The refinance share of mortgage activity increased to 41.5 percent of total applications from 40.7 percent the previous week. The adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) share of activity increased to 8.5 percent of total applications.” Huh? Refis approaching 50 percent, and ARMs approaching 10 percent? Lenders are certainly focusing on helping clients with refinancing out of high interest rate credit card debt, and with the yield curve heading toward a more normal shape, 5-1 and 7-1 adjustable rate products are seeing renewed interest. (Today’s podcast can be found here and Sponsored by Total Expert, the purpose-built customer engagement platform trusted by hundreds of modern financial institutions. Total Expert turns customer data into actionable insights that help lenders engage and guide consumers through complex financial decisions. Hear an interview with borrower Riley Howard on his strategy for choosing a lender.) Products, Services, and Software for Lenders and Brokers

Although there were flashes of potential volatility in the underlying bond market at times today, mortgage rates made it through unscathed.  In other words, the volatility wasn’t sufficient to force the average lender to make mid-day changes to the rates they decided to offer this morning. Whereas yesterday saw an inconsequentially small increase of 0.01% to the average conventional 30yr fixed rate, today saw just the opposite.  That means our rate index once again matches its lowest level since October 4th, 2024.  While this is undoubtedly a victory, rates would need to fall quite a bit more in order to hit the next milestone at the levels just one month earlier in early September (6.11% back then versus 6.57% today). An improvement like that would require multiple downbeat economic reports over the course of several weeks as well as lower-than-expected inflation readings.  Without that sort of data, there’s a risk that rates aren’t able to make much additional progress from here.

More Ground-Holding Despite Weird Intraday Spike

This morning’s commentary led with our desire to avoid jinxing this week’s flat, boring market movement with rates at long term lows.  But for a few minutes mid-day, it looked like the jinx was real. At 11:35am, yields shot 3bps higher in a matter of minutes and in exceptionally heavy volume. Several hours later and there are still no solid explanations for the mini-drama. Thankfully, explanations are less important after Treasuries fully erased the mid-day weakness.  Mystery moves like this happen.  They usually offer clues by end of the trading session, but traders/analysts only tend to ravenously pursue those clues when the day-over-day movement is much larger.  Since today’s wasn’t, this one will be forgotten and chalked up to a very small number of tight-lipped traders making very big moves that caused a mini mid-day snowball. 

Market Movement Recap

10:31 AM Initially weaker overnight, but rallying back since 5am.  10yr now roughly unchanged at 4.214 and MBS up 1 tick (.03).

12:18 PM Big selling at 11:35 and mostly stabilized now.  No explanations available.  10yr was over 4.25, but now up only 1.9bps at 4.233.  MBS are back to unchanged after being down an eighth of a point.

01:26 PM modestly weaker after 10yr Treasury auction.  MBS down 1 tick (.03) and 10yr up 3bps at 4.244

04:11 PM Heading out with MBS up 2 ticks (.06) and 10yr up 1.2bps at 4.226