Market cap for 9/12 and some tips for the weekend.

With some bond friendly economic reports out today, I expected a break above the ceiling of resistance today and oops....we didn't get it. The market movers that were due today were PPI for August, estimated at -.5% and the actual was -.9% so that's good news right off the bat at 8:30 this morning. Bonds opened up 6bps and all was well as my Friday morning got started. Retail sales were worse than expected, -.3% compared to the expected +.3% and retail sales minus auto were -.7% compared to the estimated -.2%. This means that business is down but inflation was better/less than expected. Both VERY good for bonds. Consumer sentiment was higher than expected, 73.1 compared to the estimate of 64.0, but even still, bonds should've seen a rally. We hit that ceiling of resistance and didn't break through. Often the result of the failure to punch through that line is a significant retreat and profit taken from investors. That's exactly what we saw and by the end of the day our 5.5% FNMA benchmark bond closed at $100.59 and just above the floor of support at the $100.50 mark. So we were down 47bps on Friday's trading. This put a good many lenders in a position to reprice for the worse and that they did as many lenders acted on that pricing with a small uptick in rates this afternoon. That said, it was all technical driven as the stock markets took money from bonds late in the day. The Dow, down as much as 150 points at one time today, rallied to close only down 11pts at 11,421. The NASDAQ picked up 3pts to close at 2,261 and the broader S&P 500 picked up 2 pts to close at 1,251. So although it should've been a bond friendly day, the X factors played their hand and hurt my float theory. However, next week we have a mainly moderate market movers and a lot of them. We could see our bonds pick back up a little steam on Monday since we did close above the 200 day moving average and above the floor of support. So we're in between that range with no resistance immediately above us and therefore just a little push could send rates right back on the downward track they have been on for a little while now. We'll see, but I will be in a lock mode come Monday's first rate sheet if we get that improvement. The only big movers next week are on Tuesday. Reports due out on Tuesday are CPI, Core CPI, and the Fed meets as well. So we could get a little chatter from the Fed that may impact our late day rate sheets Tuesday and/or our Wednesday morning pricing. Stay tuned for that and I'll do my best to keep you up to speed.

Tips for the weekend. If you're showing a house, schedule a time to get on the phone with me and with your client. Get a better idea of what they can afford before you spend $4/gal driving around looking at houses that they may or may not be able to afford. (That brings up a side note.....Oil closed at $100.90/barrel which means that price went down yet again today in spite of Ike.....why? Because Ike isn't going to disrupt supply according to investors. Then why did all the gas stations reprice incredibly higher today and why were there lines at the pumps last night? Because of fear!! Unfounded fear pushed our price at the pump up because the artificial spike in demand created by the media and the willingness of the gas companies to sit silent rather than quell those fears. I didn't fill up out of principal so I may be walking to the SC/UGA game but I'll feel better about it.) The other thing I can do on the phone with your client this weekend is what those gas companies didn't do, that is quiet all the fear and anxiety that they have about buying a house in the middle of what appears to be the apocalypse if you took the bait the newspapers and tv news anchors were throwing out there. I won't throw them under the bus though, they are reading and printing what they are given. If they want accuracy, they just need to call people that live it every day they roll out of bed and get the story from the source, not from an intern pulling up other news stories. That's another rambling rant for another day.......

Bottom line is the scared customer doesn't buy. If you want to sell, eliminate the fear. Since purchasing a home comes with two "main fears"; is this a good buy and a good value for me and my family? That's your department and you can handle that. And the second is, can I properly structure and secure my financing so that it's affordable, realistic, and beneficial for my family and our financial well being? That's my department. You can't handle both by yourself so the only way you are going to efficiently and successfully continue selling is to make sure your client gets on the phone with me and you go house hunting with the "Fear" out of the picture. Then you just got to write contracts!