Final Update/ Week of December 14, 2009

Good Morning Everyone and Happy Friday! Equity markets slipped significantly yesterday, especially late in the session. The Dow finished down 132 points, and credit markets improved all through the day. Equity markets are struggling to make up even a fraction of those losses today, and they are going to struggle as this is a quadruple witching day. Traders need to get out of their options and futures, and this is going to create a lot of action and a lot of volatility.

Credit markets are giving back a little of their gains this morning, but pricing is relative to the improvements some investors came out with yesterday afternoon. All in all, we’re about (.25) better in rebate from yesterday morning’s pricing . . . nice!

We talked yesterday about California’s unemployment, which was released today for the month of November. We saw a slight drop . . . the first one after 23 months of consistently rising unemployment numbers. We now sit at 12.3% unemployed for the state (although some pockets like Riverside are over 16%) . . . and the forecast we discussed yesterday said that we will hover around 12%, but probably not much higher. They also predicted that we will remain above 10% through 2012. YOIKES!

There are no economic news releases today. Have you seen the run in oil prices in the last several days? We were below $69 a barrel a few days ago, and now we hover around $75 . . . so much for cheaper gas for the holidays. I will be in the office until about 4:00 today . . . but any locking or relocking activity is going to have to happen early, and then we’ll all be in a conference call at 11:00 gearing up for the new GFE.

If I don’t speak to you today . . . have a terrific Friday and a very enjoyable and festive weekend!