Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Let's start with the bad news and work our way to good. Mortgage applications dropped 14.1% to levels not seen since 2000, with purchase applications down 7.8%. This is understandable in our ever tightening loan market. With rates up and concerns on inflation being the biggest reason, the best action is to have rates go down and hope the inflation hype relaxes. On to the good news. Today we had a set of positive signs for investors for both the bond and stocks. This month's ADP jobs report came in with an expected gain of 9,000 jobs instead of the expected loss of 60,000 jobs. Boosting the bond was President Bush signing of the legislation into law in order to help the floundering mortgage industry. Not to be outdone the Fed extended their emergency funding program, which was supposed to end in September, to January 2009. Bonds initially dropped this morning with the news, but has since recovered into positive territory and may even give us a price change for the better today. Keep a sharp eye on oil today as it may drive down the market. Rates are about the same as yesterday, which are near a 1 year high, so fingers crossed for improvement in the Bond.
As always, if anything changes I will let you know.
Karl Menzer
435-849-0212
