Throughout the feverish activity on Wall Street last week, mortgage bonds sold off with force, driving mortgage rates to their highest levels since July. It was the fourth straight week in which mortgage rates worsened. But, with the mortgage markets closed Monday, stock markets rallied to their largest one-day gain in history. The Dow Jones’ [...]

I am sure you you have seen the above ad everywhere! Or they talk about the recent bailout or some other ‘headline news’. First things first… they are ingenious at advertising. Using fear of loss is a powerful message. Grabbing relevant headlines and spinning it for eyeballs (like always using woman and movement to get [...]

Given the stock market’s recent performance, it’s not surprising that gasoline’s falling prices are garnering very little attention. That doesn’t make it any less relevant, however. Since peaking in July, gas prices are off by 20 percent. Falling gas prices are an important positive for the U.S. economy because less money spent at the pump [...]

Buyers are returning to the housing market. Each month, The National Association of REALTORS® tracks homes under contract to sell, but whose closing has not yet happened. It calls them “pending sales” and publishes a monthly report to quantify them. The Pending Home Sales report is important because it’s meant to predict future home sales [...]

The Federal Reserve made an “emergency rate cut” this morning, dropping the Fed Funds Rate by one half-percent to 1.500 percent. The move is meant to stimulate the U.S. economy. When the Federal Reserve changes the Fed Funds Rate, it often takes 9 months for the changes to work their way through the economy. On [...]

Just wanted to give you a quick update on news as it happens and what affect it may have on your finances. Central Banks with the exception of Japan, announced a coordinated rate cut this morning. The fed fundss rate is down .5%. That means prime rate (what your home equity line and credit cards [...]

Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed below the psychologically-important 10,000 level for the first time since 2004. Despite the milestone-marker breach, however, there was a large group of Americans with reason to cheer. As stocks sold off, mortgage markets rallied to the benefit of home buyers and mortgage rates shoppers everywhere. Conforming mortgages rates [...]

The Bailout: What Does Paulson Do Now? Even with $700 billion, the Treasury Secretary must selectively target banks and toxic assets to get the maximum impact Mutual Distrust Freezes Lending Among Banks At the core of the financial crisis is a simple problem: Banks don’t fully trust each other. So they hoard cash and only [...]

Congress approved the $700 billion “Bailout Bill” Friday, answering the question that dogged mortgage markets all week long: Will they or won’t they pass it? The uncertainty prior to the vote created huge market swings that ultimately sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst week since the 2001 terrorist attacks, while causing similar [...]

In an effort to provide “the most market support possible”, Fannie Mae is cutting one of its mandatory loan fees by 0.250 percent, effective immediately. Fannie Mae introduced the Adverse Market Delivery Charge in December 2007 to offset foreclosure and delinquency losses. The initial fee was a quarter-percent of the amount borrowed. Then, as market [...]