The move was necessary for Dark Matter in order for it to align the size of its workforce with current mortgage market realities, CEO Sean Dugan said.

The government-sponsored enterprise is retiring a technology platform used for loan workout reporting and giving mortgage companies a deadline for leaving it.

A growing supply of unsold inventory applied downward pressure on prices, offering home buyers some relief, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

Today’s Gains Help Us Understand Yesterday’s Losses

Wednesday’s weakness was severely lacking in the scapegoat department. In other words, there were not big, obvious justifications for the spike in bond yields. Today’s rally had a suggestion: perhaps the market was nervous about a potential update to the inflation framework in today’s Powell speech.  After all, it was the previous inflation framework update in 2020 (which basically concluded that rates could stay “lower for longer,” even if inflation was elevated) that was responsible for a lot of drama over the past 3 years. Although the 8:30am economic data helped a bit, most of today’s gains followed the 8:40am Powell speech.  The absence of stock losses makes the Powell explanation all the more plausible (i.e. if bonds were rallying on weak data, we’d expect to see stocks lose some ground, and they didn’t).

Econ Data / Events

Retail Sales

0.1 vs 0.0 f’cast

Retail Sales Control Group

-0.2 vs 0.3 f’cast, 0.5 prev

Core PPI Monthly

-0.4 vs 0.3 f’cast, 0.4 prev

Core PPI Annual

3.1 vs 3.1 f’cast, 4.0 prev
big revision from 3.3 last month

Jobless Claims

229k vs 229k

Philly Fed 

-4 vs -11 f’cast, -26.4 prev

Market Movement Recap

09:28 AM Modestly stronger overnight and catching a “no whammies” bid early.  MBS up 9 ticks (.28) and 10yr yield down 6 bps at 4.475

12:10 PM Best levels of the day with MBS up nearly half a point and 10yr down 8.5bps at 4.45

02:59 PM Still near best levels.  MBS up 3/8ths and 10yr down 8bps at 4.456

Houses in 85% of the nation’s metropolitan areas are considered overvalued, with more than half of those by 10% or above, Fitch Ratings found.

US corporations with over a trillion in assets snapped up an unprecedented amount of short-term Treasuries when President Donald Trump announced a 90-day delay for most of his “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to Clearwater Analytics.

The plaintiff is asking for a Seattle federal court to postpone the Redfin shareholder vote, scheduled for June 4, until the company disseminates supplemental information curing the alleged omissions in the proxy filing.

The closely watched case centers on bank allegations the government corporation promised certain reverse-mortgage assets in return for funding then reneged.

The Financial Technology Association will now defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s open banking rule after the Trump administration sided with banks that sued the agency.

As Roy Cohn once instructed a young Donald Trump, much can be accomplished by attacking first and dealing with the consequences later. I get opinions from both sides: “Rob, when are you going to wise up? Yesterday’s Commentary discussed a lopsided pro-Trump view of the recent tariff activity, and how the changes may impact mortgage rates. But China made no concessions. By now, most of us are familiar with this pattern: Trump makes big claims about what his tariffs can get, only for him to later back down without the other country giving up anything meaningful. It happened with Mexico, Canada, and most of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ levies. Despite his claims, the United States seems to need other countries’ trade as much as they need ours, diminishing Trump’s negotiating position. Meanwhile, our financial markets are jacked around, and our potential borrowers are afraid to pull the trigger. Your readers should keep that in mind.” (Today’s podcast can be found here and Sponsored by TRUE and its Mortgage Operations Service (MOS) AI background worker, which transforms borrower documents into instant, trustworthy data for real-time decisioning. TRUE helps lenders accelerate decisions, cut costs, and deliver superior borrower experience, all without a $100M tech budget. Hear an interview with Hometap’s Josh Gaffney on the evolving regulatory landscape for Home Equity Investments (HEIs), highlighting state-by-state approaches, industry-led initiatives, and what an ideal regulatory framework could look like as the market matures.)