economic – The Daily Tearsheet

Morning Report: Home demand is back

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2823	-23.1
Oil (WTI)	28.79	1.29
10 year government bond yield		0.60%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		3.36%

Stocks are lower this morning after a lousy retail sales number. Bonds and MBS are up.

Retail sales fell 16.4% MOM and 21.6% YOY, according to Census. Obviously these are unprecedented numbers, never seen before. Apparel, home furnishings, and electronics were down the most.

Joe Biden would support rent forgiveness if elected. In other words, if you missed rent payments due to COVID, you’ll never have to pay them back. This is just election pandering – the chance of this getting through Congress is pretty much zero. I guess it is a way to encourage the Bernie Sanders supporters to come out and vote for him on election day.

Meanwhile, the FHFA is extending its foreclosures and eviction moratorium until June 30.

Interesting data point: Home buyer demand is higher than it was pre-COVID 19. Meanwhile supply is down 25%. Big open floor plans are out, home offices are in. “Pre-COVID people wanted a beautiful open floor plan. After a few months in quarantine, buyers want quiet spaces where they can actually get away from everyone else and dedicated space for school and work.”

JP Morgan and American Homes 4 Rent are joining together to build suburban homes. FWIW, COVID-19 might be what makes the white picket fence cool again.

Morning Report: The Fed maintains rates at zero

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2908	-28.1
Oil (WTI)	16.81	3.29
10 year government bond yield		0.61%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		3.43%

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

The Fed maintained interest rates at 0% and pledged to continue to do what it can to support functioning markets, including buying agency mortgage backed securities and treasuries. They didn’t specify amounts, just that they wanted to keep orderly markets. As Dave Stevens noted, it is clear the Fed wants to see lower mortgage rates as a way to stimulate the economy. The problem with that of course is that the CARES Act is doing the exact opposite – it is restricting credit more than what happened in 2008. The MBA’s Mortgage Credit Availability index took a nosedive in March, and I think it will be much, much worse in April.

Flagstar just announced a 5 point LLPA for cash-out refis. It is clear that these are the next program to go bye-bye, joining jumbos, non-QM, and sub 700 FHA. The law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head once again. I wonder if the government could tweak the CARES Act to make cash-outs ineligible for forbearance. That way the program could still exist and provide relief to people hit by COVID. Presumably if you do a cash-out, you have money to live on, so….

Initial Jobless Claims came in at 3.8 million, pushing the COVID job losses over 30 million.

Personal incomes fell 2% in March and personal spending fell 7%. The personal consumption expenditure index remained under control. I suspect that increasing food prices are being offset by lower energy prices.

Mortgage REITs AGNC and Annaly reported yesterday, and needless to say both were hit hard by COVID. Both have completed their deleveraging, and AGNC noted that its book value per share increased by 8% in April, after declining about 22% in Q1. For the agency REITs, it looks like the crisis is over.

Another round of stimulus may be a bridge too far. Nancy Pelosi wants to force states to vote by mail, and that is a non-starter with Republicans. Mitch McConnell wants lawsuit protection for businesses that remain open during the COVID crisis, and that is a non-starter to Democrats. As Travelers noted on its conference call, trial lawyers smell an opportunity here and are ginning up lawsuits as we speak.

Morning Report: The Fed is sanguine on the economy

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	3322	-3.25
Oil (WTI)	50.11	-0.32
10 year government bond yield		1.56%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		3.66%

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

The upcoming week will be date-light, however we will have a lot of Fed-speak. Jerome Powell will be delivering his semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday. In terms of economic data, we will get CPI, retail sales and industrial production this week. None of these should be market-movers. The 10 year will be driven mainly by the global risk on / risk off trade which will be led by China.

The Fed said that downside risks to the US economy have diminished over the past few months, although Coronavirus remains a threat. Remember, recoveries don’t die of old age – they are either murdered by the Fed or are ended by some external event. “Downside risks to the U.S. outlook seem to have receded in the latter part of the year, as the conflicts over trade policy diminished somewhat, economic growth abroad showed signs of stabilizing, and financial conditions eased. The likelihood of a recession occurring over the next year has fallen noticeably in recent months.”

The Atlanta Fed has Q1 growth coming in at 2.7%.

Mortgage credit availability dipped in January, according to the MBA. “Mortgage credit availability was mostly unchanged to start 2020, decreasing 0.2 percent in January,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Similar to December of 2019, the decline came from the reduction of low credit score, high-LTV programs. Furthermore, there continues to be movement with both adds and drops in the government program space, with the net result last month showing small growth in the government index. Although credit supply has flattened these last two years, the meaningful increase seen overall since the Great Recession has been helpful to the growing share of first-time homebuyers, as well as refinance borrowers looking to act on lower mortgage rates. Ongoing housing supply constraints in the lower-price range continues to hold prospective buyers back the most.”

Interesting article in American Banker: Big banks lost money on mortgages in 2018. “Large banks withstood an average loss of $4,803 for every retail mortgage originated in 2018 (compared with a net profit of $376 per loan for independent mortgage bankers). Appetite for these kinds of losses is increasing.” Why were they doing this business? It is all about the MSR. And unfortunately for holders of servicing, rates have been going down, not up which is a negative for servicing assets. As rates have fallen, banks have had to reach for yield, which generally means taking more risk. I know that 2018 data is far in the rear view mirror, but that is an incredible number.

Morning Report: Welcome to 2020

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	3251	20.25
Oil (WTI)	61.07	0.04
10 year government bond yield		1.88%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		3.95%

Stocks are higher this morning after China eased reserve rates overnight. Bonds and MBS are flat.

Announced job cuts (in other words, press releases discussing layoffs) fell to 32,845 in December according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. “Confidence was high heading into the last month of the year. With some resolutions occurring in the trade war and strong consumer spending in the fourth quarter, companies appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach as we head into 2020,” said Andrew Challenger, Vice President of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. “The sectors with the highest number of cuts this year were all dealing with trade concerns, emerging technologies, and shifts in consumer behavior. We tracked a lot of hiring activity in these industries as well as cuts,” said Challenger. Separately, initial jobless claims fell to 222k last week.

Mortgage Applications fell by 5% as purchases and refis fell by the same amount. “The 10-Year Treasury yield increased [the week ending December 20] amid signs of stronger home building activity and solid consumer spending, leading to a rise in conventional conforming and jumbo 30-year mortgage rates to just under 4 percent,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “With this increase, conventional refinance application volume fell 11 percent. Refinance applications for government loans did increase, even though rates on FHA loans picked up. The change in the mix of business has kept the average refinance loan size smaller than we had seen earlier this year.”

The Trump Administration is saying that a Phase 1 deal is done, and everyone is waiting on translation. “It’s got great stuff in it,” he [Trade Advisor Peter Navarro] said. “It’s got essentially the same chapter we had in the May deal that the Chinese walked away from on intellectual property theft. So that’s a good deal….For Wall Street … financial market access for the banks, insurance companies and credit card companies,” he added.

Happy new year, and here’s to a prosperous 2020, with housing starts above 1.5 million, originations over $2.2 trillion and a 30 year fixed rate mortgage below 3.5%. Hey, it could happen.

Morning Report: Goldilocks jobs report

Vital Statistics:

	Last	Change
S&P futures	2891	6.75
Eurostoxx index	387.8	-1
Oil (WTI)	62.72	0.26
10 year government bond yield		2.54%
30 year fixed rate mortgage		4.20%

Stocks are higher this morning after the payroll number. Bonds and MBS are down small.

Jobs report data dump:

Nonfarm payrolls up 196,000 (expectation 180,000)
Average hourly earnings up 0.1% MOM / 3.2% YOY (expectation 0.3% / 3.4%)
Labor force particpation rate 63%
Unemployment rate 3.8%

Overall, it was a bit of a Goldilocks jobs report: enough strength to quell fears of a slowdown, but tame enough wage growth to keep the Fed from tightening more. January and February’s payroll numbers were revised upward by 14,000.

Trump will nominate Herman Cain for the Federal Reserve Board. While many find the idea of nominating a pizza chain executive strange, he did run the Kansas City Fed so he does have monetary policy experience. Certainly with Steve Moore and Herman Cain, there will be a different voice from the predominantly academic / salt water view on things.

The Senate confirmed Mark Calabria to run FHFA.