From the monthly archives:
I’m seeing potentially significant moves in several areas of the currency and bond market this morning. Most notably, the Dollar Index is breaking out to the upside (+89 ticks to 87.55) and the 2-year swap spread is blowing out (+15 basis points to about 73 bps as I write). These are “yellow alert” signals that [...]
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The “foreclosure moratorium” wave sweeping through the mortgage world continues to pick up momentum. Just today, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup announced they would halt home foreclosures through March (the 6th for JPMorgan and the 12th for Citigroup) — or until the Obama administration rolls out its latest foreclosure prevention plan.
For JPMorgan, no new [...]
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The Treasury just sold $14 billion of 30-year bonds. The auction wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t so hot, either. Pre-auction talk was for the bonds to sell at a yield of 3.51%. Instead, they sold at 3.54%. The bid-to-cover ratio came in at just 2.02, compared with 2.07 at the last auction and an average [...]
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Good Thursday morning. A few things are catching my eye in the early going …
* Retail sales popped 1% in January, and 0.9% if you exclude autos. Those readings were better than expectations for readings of -0.8% and -0.4%, respectively. There was some relative strength in categories like food and clothing, as well as gasoline [...]
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If you’re interested in the full text of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s speech from this morning, you can read it here. But I’ll sum it up by saying that it contains a lot of talk, with few details. Everyone is kind of sitting around and asking, “That’s it? No real details on the plan? No [...]
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So today is the big day. The Obama administration is putting a full-court press on for the bank bailout plan, and most of the details of the efforts are now hitting the tape in various forms.
One key component will be expansion of the TALF program, which is designed to light a fire under the asset [...]
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Good Monday morning! The big news of the day has to be the 24 -our hold put on the latest bank bailout plan. It was slated to be released today; Now, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner won’t be rolling it out until Tuesday. The stated reason for the delay? So that everyone can focus on the economic [...]
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I’ve been in New York this week attending a real estate seminar, and while I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to share my thoughts on the housing and interest rate markets with a few media outlets. You can watch a Wall Street Journal spot here, a BNN TV spot here, and a CNBC Asia spot [...]
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