Morning Report: The era of low mortgage rate is over

Vital Statistics:

			Last	Change
S&P futures			2713	-5.75
Eurostoxx index			394.37	-1.42
Oil (WTI)			71.39	-0.08
10 Year Government Bond Yield				3.09%
30 Year fixed rate mortgage				4.69%

Stocks are lower this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up small. 

Slow news day. with no economic data. 

The Wall Street Journal has declared the era of low mortgage rates is over. What does this mean for the industry? For the industry overall, it means a tougher fight to keep purchase business, but it also could depress home sales as a combination of higher home prices and higher rates make moving up too unaffordable. NAR estimates that the effect of a 100 basis point increase in mortgage rates can reduce sales by 8%. Mortgage rates have been on a tear this year, increasing 62 basis points since the end of 2017. The 10 year yield has increased by the same amount, and usually mortgage rates don't move up in a 1:1 ratio with Treasuries. I wouldn't be surprised to see mortgage rates fall if Treasury yields stall out here. 

I suspect that "convexity selling" has been driving the moves in rates. Mortgages have a quirky characteristic called negative convexity. Negative convexity explains why a GN mortgage with an expected duration of 7 years will pay a higher yield than a Treasury with a duration of 7 years. Neither one has credit risk, but they have different interest rate risk. MBS investors (say mortgage REITs or hedge funds) will buy mortgages and hedge interest rate risk by selling Treasuries. As interest rates rise, they can get balanced by either selling MBS (which pushes mortgage rates up) or by buying Treasuries (which pushes interest rates up). Whenever you see big moves in rates during a short period of time, you are often seeing convexity hedging exacerbating the move, which is why you will see a retracement in rates after the re-hedging activity finishes. We saw a big move this week as Treasuries broke the 3.1% level. Mortgage rates have shot up as well. 

Do credit cycles drive the business cycle or is it the other way around? Historically, business cycles have driven credit cycles. In other words, business dries up, making debt harder to service, which causes banks to retrench and raise cash. The last two cycles however, the credit cycle drove the business cycle. Credit tightened up first, and then the economy rolled over. Is this a new trend? My guess is that it probably isn't, as the last two economic booms were driven by bubbles in stocks (late 90s) and residential real estate (mid 00s). This time around, asset prices are high, but we don't have anything comparable to the stock market or real estate bubbles this time around. Your major macro credit risk is that the Fed overdoes it, not that a bunch of debt backed by garbage assets implodes. 

Everyone loves ETFs these days. They have low fees, provide instant diversification, and are liquid. In the fixed income market however, the liquidity is probably a bit of an illusion. Corporate bond issuance has soared since the bottom of the cycle in 2012, yet the amount of market-making capacity has been shrunk by 80-90%. The issue for ETF investors is that they expect to have liquidity in these instruments, but in a crisis the underlying assets of these bond funds will experience a tremendous shock. Why? Because Dodd-Frank's Volcker Rule has essentially ended market-making as a business for banks. Market-making activity means that when everyone wants to sell, the banks who issued these bonds would usually step in and act as the buyer of last resort. This time around, that won't happen and ETFs will trade at huge discounts to their supposed net asset value. There is no such thing as a financial free lunch, and investors are going to discover the downside of low fees, tight spreads and marginal cost commissions the next time the credit cycle turns.

Morning Report: More rent versus buy

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P Futures	2124.7	-12.0
Eurostoxx Index	343.3	-1.0
Oil (WTI)	50.3	-1.3
US dollar index	88.6	0.0
10 Year Govt Bond Yield	1.74%
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA	103.3
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA	104.2
30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage	3.57

Stocks are lower this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up.

No economic data today, however we do have some Fed-speak.

Following on yesterday's rent-versus-buy article from Trulia, I crunched some numbers to demonstrate the relative value proposition currently. Using census data for median asking rent and median house prices, I plotted the median asking rent against the mortgage payment for a FHA loan with 3.5% down, including mortgage insurance, property taxes, homeowner's insurance, and the tax benefit of deducting interest and property taxes for a borrower making the median income. Historically, buying has resulted in a payment higher than the median rent payment. This makes sense: your mortgage payment will be more or less fixed, while rent will increase with inflation. 

The chart below plots the two numbers in absolute dollars. You can see the two lines converging which means the rent-versus-buy decision is about as far skewed towards buying than it ever has been.

In the second chart, I plotted the difference between the "median" mortgage payment and median asking rent. The range recently has been anywhere from -10% to 100%. 

The other thing to keep in mind with the rent vs buy decision is that the world's central banks are on a mission to create inflation. They will eventually succeed, and over time the asking rent is going to increase, while the mortgage payment will be largely fixed, with the exception of property taxes and perhaps homeowner's insurance. On the other side of the coin, home price appreciation will probably maintain at least a mid-single digit rate of appreciation, which is higher than the mortgage interest rate, especially when you take into account the tax benefits. 

The takeaway is that the Fed is giving the homeowner a gift in low rates, and that won't last forever. 

Morning Report: June payrolls rebound in a big way

Vital Statistics:	Last	Change
S&P Futures	2112.0	15.0
Eurostoxx Index	324.3	2.1
Oil (WTI)	45.5	0.4
US dollar index	87.1	0.1
10 Year Govt Bond Yield	1.41%
BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage	3.44

Stocks are higher after the jobs report came in stronger than expected. Bonds and MBS are down small.

Jobs report data dump:

• Nonfarm payrolls + 287k
• Two month revision -6k
• Unemployment rate 4.9%
• Labor force participation rate 62.7%
• Average weekly hours 34.4
• Average hourly earnings + 0.1% (+2.6% YOY)

The payrolls number is certain to get everyone's attention, however some of that might be a catch-up from May, which was revised downward to only 11k jobs. The 3 month average is 147k. Given Brexit, this report probably doesn't move the needle for the Fed. Until we start seeing more evidence of wage inflation the Fed isn't going to be aggressive. 

Mortgage rates have lagged the move downward in Treasuries. As we saw in 2012, bond yields bottomed out in July, but mortgage rates continued to fall for another 4 months, finally bottoming in November. We are seeing the same thing again, where mortgage rates have fallen with the 10 year, but nowhere near as dramatically. Note the MBA keeps bumping up its forecast for 2016 volume. 

Morning Report: the 10 year hits an intra-day record low, but mortgage rates lag

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change	Percent
S&P Futures	2090.5	0.3	0.01%
Eurostoxx Index	2888.6	23.9	0.83%
Oil (WTI)	48.03	-0.3	-0.62%
LIBOR	0.646	0.015	2.38%
US Dollar Index (DXY)	95.66	-0.488	-0.51%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield	1.44%	-0.03%
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA	106.2
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA	105.6
BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage	3.53

Markets are flattish as we head into a 3 day weekend. Bonds and MBS are up.

Bonds will close early today and most of the Street will be on the LIE by noon. 

Manufacturing picked up in June, according to the ISM Manufacturing Survey. New orders were up while prices paid fell.

Construction spending fell 0.8% in May versus an expected increase of 0.6%. April was revised downward from -1.8% to -2%. Homebuilding was flat versus April and is up 5.3% on a year-over-year basis. 

Vehicle sales are coming in this morning, and they look light generally. 

Overnight, the 10 year yield touched 1.38%, which is a record low on the 10 year. It looks like we are getting ready for another refi boom. Vanguard, Blackrock, and Guggenheim are all making the call that Brexit means slower growth and lower rates for the next couple of years. How pension funds and insurance companies, which need to earn 7% or more to keep up with liability growth will do that is beyond me. 

Note that the Bankrate 30 year fixed rate mortgage rate is still about 20 basis points higher than the record low set in late 2012. Mortgage backed securities have lagged the move up in Treasuries. Below is a chart of the Bankrate 30 year fixed rate mortgage rate versus the 10 year yield. The top line is mortgage rates, the lower line is the 10 year yield. If you look at the 2012 period, you can see that the 10 year yield bottomed out in July, and started rising into the end of the year. Mortgage rates kept falling throughout the year, bottoming out in December. So, mortgage rates didn't bottom out until 5 months after Treasuries did. 

If you plot the difference between the two rates (basically a proxy for MBS spreads), you can see that the current difference is approaching a high again. If this is a truly mean-reverting series, you should expect that gap to close over time, and that will either happen through higher Treasury yields or lower mortgage rates. Given the momentum in the Treasury markets at the moment, it is probably mortgage rates that will have to give. Which means we could have a good refi season into the end of the year. 

The worlds' central bankers are being forced to take the global economy into account more and more. Brexit gives Janet Yellen the excuse to hold off on hiking rates until we see inflation in the US. The ECB and the Bank of England are looking at easing. Could the next move by the Fed be some sort of stimulative measure, like bringing back QE or cutting the Fed Funds rate back down to .25%? It is definitely a non-zero probability. 

The discussion draft of the bill to reform the CFPB is out. The main changes would be to bring the agency under Congressional control (it nominally reports to the Fed, but in reality it reports to no one) and to replace a single director with a bipartisan board of 5. It will also make some changed aimed at curbing the most abusive practices of the agency. While the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party will fight this tooth and nail, the affordable housing lobby is getting sick and tired of tight credit. Note that the President doesn't think there is an issue, and even if there was, it isn't his fault. Quote from the article:

Bloomberg Magazine: "Some of the rules put in place have meant it’s harder to get a loan. Something like 58 percent of approved mortgages are going to the wealthiest applicants, and homeownership among African Americans is down. Where’s the balance there?

Obama: "Well, the interesting thing—and we’ve looked at this very carefully—is that there’s no doubt that there’s been some pullback and increased conservatism on the part of lenders. But oftentimes, it’s not justified by the regulations"