As the Mighty Ben Speaketh so the Market Goes!
Yes as most of you may be aware, Mr Bernanke made some comment during his speech he felt the economy was showing some signs of recovery and that a third Quantitative Easing is not likely. (QEIII) Is it accurate? Parts of it are but whats really amazing is that his power and position give him and his words (dissected to the Nth degree) a level of juice Google would die to have. So while I do agree the economy has "pieces/segments" that are doing better but after being 6 feet under sure 4 feet under is better but its still 4 feet under! So...
What immediately followed was on over exuberance of gargantuan proportion. We went from finally breaking through the glass ceiling of 103 on the FNMA 3.5 coupon to a disastrous close and with one comment and less than 2 hours watched what took 2 weeks to rebuild vanish into thin air with the FNMA 3.5 closing down almost 90 bps and ending the days session at a level from 2 weeks ago, 102.156! What this did to pricing was a hit near 1 full point to the cost of a loan. So if your loan was 200,000 and you locked this afternoon versus this morning your costs increased for the same loan close to 2000! Thats a tremendous amount of money on a small scale and what we are talking about is nationwide for the entire industry!
So let me ask you this...
- Is the economy that much better where you live?
- Is your personal economy that much better?
- Are those you deal with seeing gains (significant or minor)?
- are you seeing those out of work back to work (with valid work not mickey mouse short term employment)?
- Is the global economy as well as the US economy seeing the kind of significant recover needed to sustain a move this dramatic?
Well if the answers to those questions are YES then be prepared this could be a similar sign to the events of 10/10 when a speech that was over dissected started a sell off of epic proportion and the end result was an increase (albeit short/a few months) of almost 1.5%! yes not in costs but in RATE!
In the next few days ahead and, for your own personal indicator, if you think the answers to the above questions are YES then be prepared this could be the start of a huge bond hit. If the answer is a little but not really then this could be our new trading range for a while 102-103 for the FNMA 3.5 coupon. If your answer is NO then its very likely this was a gross overreaction to a statement and more specifically a sentence in that statement and we may see this dead cat bounce a bit tomorrow and in the next few days to come.
Regardless of the direction know this... The ride is going to be bumpy so please remain seated and fasten your seat belts!
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