VABS News and Press, Virtus Newfleet ABS/MBS ETF From 11/08/23

2023-11-08 18:25:00 ET Summary As we head into 2024, we think that the next phase for the Federal Reserve is likely a pause while the central bank assesses the impact of the tighter lending and financial conditions it’s established. We’re not in the hard landing camp...

2023-11-07 20:10:00 ET Summary New home prices are trending downward. They're falling, but they are falling very slowly. The average 30-year conventional fixed-rate mortgage now has an interest rate approaching 8%. Mortgage rates have doubled since 2019. The relative affordabi...

2023-11-07 20:00:00 ET Summary More than a decade of near-zero interest rates spawned a generation of bonkers financial decisions. Now, we are in the reveal and clean-up phase. Unlike fixed-term mortgages, other forms of credit quickly change with overnight policy rates set by cen...

2023-11-03 23:00:00 ET Summary Long rates are now near 5%, resulting in mortgage rates now above 8.5% on average for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage and over 7.6% on a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage. As for inflation, Chairman Powell repeatedly emphasized that progress was being made b...

2023-11-03 01:25:00 ET Summary The nonfarm payroll employment unexpectedly jumped in September. The increase of 336,000 was the largest since January, and it was accompanied by upward revisions to the prior two months. The 12-month trend rate for the overall price index for person...

2023-10-26 08:29:00 ET Summary Political Calculations' initial estimate of the market capitalization of new homes sold during the month of September 2023 is $30.62 billion. While September 2023's market cap is approaching the nominal, non-inflation adjusted peak from the housing b...

2023-10-24 16:10:00 ET Summary An area of the high-quality fixed income market that hasn’t enjoyed a smooth ride this year is agency mortgage-backed securities (agency MBS). The FDIC has already liquidated approximately 95% of its agency MBS portfolio, and many market parti...

2023-10-24 12:45:00 ET Summary The release of the September "dot plot" started the recent rally in the 10-year US Treasury yield. There's also an imbalance in supply and demand for Treasury bonds. Most US mortgages are long-term fixed-rate mortgages at relatively low rates, so I d...

2023-10-21 09:00:00 ET Summary Long-term borrowers, including home buyers and businesses looking for term debt, wonder why today’s interest rates are so high and when they will fall. Long-term rates may also be influenced by global factors. Long-term rates in Europe and...

2023-10-20 21:25:00 ET Summary There’s always a lot of debate about what the best inflation hedge is. Is it gold, commodities, TIPS, stocks, Bitcoin, real assets or something else? There has been a lot of chatter about long-term bonds in recent weeks as yields continue to m...