10 year yield – The Daily Tearsheet

Morning Report: Inflation-adjusted land prices are still below bubble levels

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2889	-9
Eurostoxx index	376.86	-2.5
Oil (WTI)	68.97	-0.89
10 year government bond yield		2.88%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		4.56%

Stocks are lower this morning on overseas weakness. Bonds and MBS are up.

Yesterday was a bit of a milestone as the 1 month T-bill briefly cracked the 2% level. Farewell, zero bound.

Tropical Storm Gordon is hitting the Gulf Coast. Oil prices have softened as the storm looks to be weaker than expected. We can still expect to see flooding issues and servicers should be prepared for an uptick in delinquencies. Things to know about your insurance if you are in the storm’s path.

Not much in the way of data today, but we have a lot of Fed-speak.

Emerging markets are getting slammed as a combination of central bank tightening, trade woes, and currency issues are pushing the asset class down. The flight to quality trade should support bond prices and help push yields lower.

Like Freddie Kreuger, government shutdown threats just keep returning. Congressional Republicans are looking to wrap up funding by October 1. Controversial issues like funding the wall would likely get pushed until after the election. As far as shutdowns go, the markets generally do not care, but originators need to remember that things like tax transcripts were unavailable the last time we shut down.

Mortgage applications fell 0.1% last week as purchases increased 1% and refis fell 1%. Rates increased about 2 basis points.

Same store sales rose 6.5%, yet another indication that the back-to-school shopping season was strong. As goes BTS, so goes the holiday season, meaning growth in Q4 should be strong. Note the Atlanta Fed raised their Q3 GDP estimate to 4.7%. Consumption is 70% of GDP.

Wells is out with a call for a 3.2% 10-year yield by the end of the year. A combination of higher deficits, lower trade deficits, and the expiration of a tax provision will lower demand in the face of rising supply. With strong spending bolstering the economy and a tight labor market, the Fed may try and squeeze in an extra rate hike to provide more breathing room in case the economy rolls over.

The September Fed Funds futures are at 99% chance of a rate hike, and the Dec futures are at a 70% chance of another.

Single-family lot prices reached a record level last year, however if you adjust for inflation, they are below the peak. Note however that lot sizes have been falling, and I don’t think this analysis corrects for that. For example, the typical lot size in the Northeast is 0.4 acres, and the typical price is $128k, which amounts to $320k an acre. On the Left Coast, the average lot size is .15 acres and the average price is $84k, which works out to be $560k an acre. Even if you correct for the declining lot size, we still aren’t back to peak levels in inflation-adjusted land prices. Builders constantly mention that land availability is a constraint on building, but this analysis shows that things were worse during the bubble years.

Morning Report: Stocks sell off as 10 year breaches 3% level

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2626.5	-9
Eurostoxx index	379.58	-3.53
Oil (WTI)	67.53	-0.22
10 Year Government Bond Yield		3.02%
30 Year fixed rate mortgage		4.59%

Stocks are lower this morning after yesterday’s interest rate-driven sell-off. Bonds and MBS are down.

The 10 year breached the 3% mark yesterday, which served as a catalyst for a substantial stock market sell-off. Of course 3% is just a round number, but it is the highest rate since 2014. Some pros are looking for a global slowdown in the economy, which could make some corporate borrowers vulnerable. We certainly appear to be in the late stages of a credit cycle. Junk-rated bond issuance has been on a tear over the past few years, reaching $3 trillion as yield-starved investors have had to reach into the lower credits to make their return bogeys. That said, corporate bond spreads are still at historical lows, (investment grade spreads are still half of what they were as recently as early 2016. Let’s also not forget that much of the bond issuance over the past 8 years went to refinance old debt at higher interest rates – in other words it was a net positive for these companies.

We are now going to see just how much of the huge rally in financial assets over the last decade was due to the inordinate amount of stimulus coming out of the Fed. As stocks now have to compete with Treasuries, some changes in asset allocations are to be expected and the riskier assets are going to bear the brunt of the selling. Keep things in perspective, however. Interest rate cycles are measured in generations.

One of the benefits of QE has been to goose asset prices (which was kind of the whole point). Increasing people’s net worth would increase spending and therefore increase GDP. It probably worked, however that hasn’t been costless. One of the problems with increasing real estate prices is that it shuts people out from places where there is opportunity (California in particular). If you already own property in CA and have been experiencing torrid home price appreciation, you can move since your increased home equity can be used to purchase another expensive property. But if you live in the Midwest were home price appreciation has been less, you might not be able to take that job in San Francisco since you can’t afford to live there. That said, negative equity was probably a bigger problem and home price appreciation did mitigate that issue.

Mortgage Applications fell 0.2% last week as purchases were flat and refis were down 0.3%. Conforming rates increased 6 basis points, while government rates increased 1. ARMs decreased to 6% of total applications. A flattening yield curve makes ARMs less and less attractive relative to 30 year fixed mortgages.

Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney has made some changes at the Bureau. First, he is ending the pursuit of auto lenders, which Dodd-Frank prohibited. The Cordray CFPB did an end-around by going after the big banks behind some of the auto financing, and that will end. Second, Mulvaney will no longer make public the complaint database against financial services companies, saying that “I don’t see anything in here that I have to run a Yelp for financial services sponsored by the federal government.” Finally, he plans to change the name from the CFPB to the BCFP. All of this is in keeping with Mulvaney’s commitment to follow the law and go no further.

Morning Report: 10 year pushing towards 3%

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2675	3.9
Eurostoxx index	381.41	0
Oil (WTI)	67.33	-1.07
10 Year Government Bond Yield		2.97%
30 Year fixed rate mortgage		4.51%

Stocks are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are down.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin signaled that the US is ready to discuss a truce in the trade war with China. He characterized his mood as “cautiously optimistic” and said he won’t make a commitment on timing. Beijing welcomed the announcement. Separately, Mnuchin also discussed easing sanctions on Rusal which sent aluminum prices back down.

Existing home sales rose on a month-over-month basis in March, but are down on an annual basis according to NAR. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says closings in March eked forward despite challenging market conditions in most of the country. “Robust gains last month in the Northeast and Midwest – a reversal from the weather-impacted declines seen in February – helped overall sales activity rise to its strongest pace since last November at 5.72 million,” said Yun. “The unwelcoming news is that while the healthy economy is generating sustained interest in buying a home this spring, sales are lagging year ago levels because supply is woefully low and home prices keep climbing above what some would-be buyers can afford.”

The median home price was $250,400, up 5.8% YOY. Inventory is down over 7% YOY to 1.67 million units, which represents a 3.6 month supply at current sales levels. A historically balanced market would be 6.5 month’s worth. Properties stayed on market for an average of 30 days, which is down almost a week YOY. The first time homebuyer accounted for 30% of sales, and all-cash sales were 20% of transactions.

Commodity price inflation has pushed the 10 year yield to 3%. Many technical analysts consider that to be confirmation that the 3 decade bull run in bonds is over. The one caveat is that the sell-off is being driven by rising commodity prices which tends to be temporary, especially if it doesn’t translate into wage growth. You can see the pop in yields post-election below. Hard to believe we were sub 1.8% in late October 2016.

This week will have some important data to the bond market, with GDP and the employment cost index on Friday. We will also get a slew of housing data with existing home sales, new home sales, and Case-Shiller.

The Street estimate for Q1 GDP is 2%. Generally speaking, the estimates from the banks are lower than the estimates from the regional Federal Reserve banks.

Economic activity moderated in March, according to the Chicago Fed National Activity Index. Production and employment indicators fell. February’s reading was unusually strong, however. The CFNAI is a meta-index of 85 different economic indices, and can be volatile. It isn’t a market-mover.

A paper suggests that the ratings agencies largely got it right with the bubble-era RMBS. The AAA tranches (even subprime) were largely money good, and the study pours cold water on the popular narrative that inflated ratings on RMBS caused the financial crisis.

The big banks are rushing to launch websites and apps for mortgages as volume contracts. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan have either launched or plan to launch mortgage banking tech products in response to Rocket Mortgage from Quicken. The company claims that 98% of its customers in the first quarter (some $20 billion in origination) accessed Rocket at some point in the application process. That is an astounding number, though I wonder if that includes push notifications that the borrower didn’t necessarily respond to or interact with.

Speaking of tech, HUD is looking into allegations of housing discrimination by Facebook. Facebook uses big data to allow advertisers to slice and dice the demographics any way they want to target their specific market. What if advertisers decide to target some demographics and not others? That is considered non-problematic for things like consumer products, but housing could be a different story.