Is March The Month?
February 13, 2024 The Federal Reserve has been quite busy this decade. We started this decade with an economy-halting pandemic in March of 2020. The Fed reacted quickly, pushing short-term rates to zero, as well as adding significant qualitative stimulus in the form of purchasing treasuries and mortgages, further pushing down long-term interest rates as […]
Read MoreSo, How Did We Do?
February 6, 2024 The triple whammy of economic data has been released during the past two weeks. The question is—how did we do overall? We have already reported that economic growth for the 4th quarter came in at an estimated 3.3%, which puts the annual rate at around 3.1% before 4th quarter revisions. Overall, a […]
Read MoreThe Tide is Turning
May 23, 2023 For a year we have had to deal with rising interest rates and lower home affordability. Much of this was expected after record-low interest rates helped fuel a real estate purchasing frenzy which resulted in prices increasing by double digits for the past few years. Fast forward to today, and home prices […]
Read MoreThe Jobs Report Gives Us an Indication
June 7, 2022 Recession – Inflation – Stagflation – Bear Market. All words/phrases that have been bantered about in the past several weeks. The market analysts are looking for any indicator as to where this economy is headed. And there is no stronger indicator than the employment report. As we mentioned, there can be no […]
Read MoreWhy Tapering Might Not Matter That Much
November 2, 2021 Today’s mortgage interest rate reflects a combination of factors such as today’s actions by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee is meeting this week and the decision on whether to taper their purchases of bonds and mortgages will be front and center. The minutes of the Fed’s last meeting […]
Read MoreAre We Expecting Too Much?
May 4, 2021 If you are reading the forecasts being released for this year, the optimism for a strong rebound has hit unprecedented highs. There has been plenty of data to support such optimism. This data has included a gain of nearly one million jobs in March. Add plenty of stimulus dollars to the equation, […]
Read MoreThe Importance of Inflation
April 6, 2021 Inflation, inflation, inflation. This year, rates have been headed up and we keep hearing this word being uttered again and again. Rates have been rising because there is an elevated threat of inflation. The question is – why are these two concepts linked together so often? Today, we would like to reintroduce […]
Read MoreHow Much is a Trillion Dollars?
March 23, 2021 Well, the issue of additional stimulus is resolved. We keep hearing the term “trillion” being bantered about. How much is a trillion dollars? A trillion dollars is a million dollars multiplied by a million. Or if you prefer, a thousand billion. It has 12 zeroes: $1,000,000,000,000. That is a lot of zeros. […]
Read MoreWhy House Values Have Soared During a Crisis
March 16, 2021 During the Great Recession, a little more than a decade ago — the value of real estate was hit significantly. We spent ten years recovering as values reached pre-recession levels and then some. During the COVID-induced recession of last year, home appreciation actually accelerated. Just recently, CoreLogic confirmed that house values rose […]
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