Update #2/ Week of November 29, 2009

Good Morning Everyone and Happy Tuesday! With news coming out in the last 24 hours about Dubai’s troubles being addressed, fears are dissipating, Asian markets posted sizeable gains, and the US stock markets are back on the rise. Yesterday, equity markets posted another Monday gain, and today we’re off to the races again. The Dow, being up 125 points, covers almost to the point the losses from Friday’s sell off. Amazing thing to all of us, is the way rates have stayed where they are. Rates and rebates are almost exactly where we were yesterday morning at this time after 155 point run up on the Dow in the same amount of time. Fine . . . we like it this way!

The dollar is weaker this morning, which has of late, been cause for a stock market rally and reason for commodities, especially the shiny metals, to rise in price. In the economic news arena this morning, the ISM Manufacturing Index for November came in just below expectations, and construction spending was flat for October. Pending homes sales for October were up 3.7% over September’s reading which is quite a bit better than the 1.0% drop anticipated by the experts. This is 9 months in a row now of rising pending home sales.

We’ve talked about this stock market so many times, I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. The bulls on Wall Street just simply are not going to let this market correct, it appears, before the end of the year. November’s gains in the stock market were about 5.7% for the month. There’s no reason to believe traders are going to allow this market to drop before cashing in on their end of the year or quarterly bonuses. Maybe after the first of the year we’ll see the markets correct. However, pricing is as good as it has been at any time in the mortgage business (at least in our life times) so let’s keep selling these great rates!

I will be in the office all day today…Please call me here or email me if I can help you with a loan scenario or pricing question. This looks like a good day to lock, too, so if you are planning to lock a loan, be sure to email me and let me know. Have a terrific Tuesday!