Jason Obradovich, EVP of Capital Markets for New American Funding is back with the latest Mortgage Rundown. With core inflation under 2% and the 10-year Treasury under 3%, the Federal Open Market Committee held steady on interest rates last week.
You probably noticed there has been very little interest-rate volatility recently. In fact, the tight range on the 10-year Treasury in June was the smallest it's been in several years.
Last week was the ever-important payroll report which showed 213k jobs added in June versus the 195k that was expected. A very positive sign but the more interesting piece of data was the unemployment rate which surprisingly went up from 3.8% to 4.0%. This was largely a result of a growing labor force, as the labor force participation rate also went up 0.2%.
Last week was another FOMC meeting where they raised the Fed Funds rate to the range of 1.75 to 2.0%, in what was a widely anticipated move. The attention now shifts to the meeting in September with the market pricing in an 81% chance of the Fed moving rates for a third time this year. Also, there is now a 50% chance the Fed will raise rates a fourth time in December.
If you've been following the market you've likely noticed that the 10-year Treasury is back down below 3%. When it seemed like nothing would stop the 10-year from rising to 3¼%, fears in Europe, mainly Italy caused a rush to safety. Right now the 10-year is trading right around 2.95% in a new range between 2.8 and 3.1%.
The 10-year finally broke through the key 3.03% resistance level and traded all the way up to 3.11%. While it looked like the 10-year was going to continue its climb closer to 3.20%, there have been some international growth concerns that have the 10yr back down to 3.01% currently.
The FOMC meeting came and went last week with little change in the Fed’s stance of 3-4 interest rate increases for 2018. If anything the Fed was slightly more dovish in their tone when they stated it’s possible they could slightly overshoot their inflation target of 2%. The translation of that means that perhaps there will only be three interest rate increases this year.
Today we are going to talk about what’s happening in the capital markets. On March 21st the Federal Reserve met and raised the benchmark rate by 25 basis points. Now what you may not have noticed or expected is that longer term interest rates actually came down since the meeting.
Today we are going to talk about what's happening in the capital markets. No doubt by now you are aware that the Federal Reserve met last week and raised the benchmark rate 25bps.
Today we are going to talk once again about what's happening with interest rates. Recall from mid-December to mid-February, the 10 year Treasury rose from 2.35% all the way up to 2.95%. Now in the last month it's down somewhat to around 2.85% while the market takes a little bit of a breather.