Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 3859 | 10.3 |
| Oil (WTI) | 52.90 | 0.14 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 1.04% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 2.83% |
Stocks are slightly higher on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up small.
The FOMC begins its two-day meeting today. The announcement is scheduled for 2:00 pm tomorrow.
Chuck Schumer said that negotiations for the stimulus may take a while. He is aiming for mid-March, when extended unemployment begins to run out. Meanwhile, the priority seems to be impeaching a guy who is no longer in office.
With stimulus looking further away, and Schumer signaling that negotiations should be tough, I wouldn’t be surprised to see bond yields drift lower. Bond markets are a global phenomenon, and while the US bond yield has been drifting upward, the German Bund (which is a proxy for Europe) has been stuck in a very narrow band around -0.54%.
Home prices rose 11% in November, according to the FHFA House Price Index. “House prices have risen by at least one percent for six consecutive months,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “The acceleration has been slowing but annual gains now outpace the prior housing boom. Current conditions can be explained by fundamentals, including low rates and tight housing supply, which have been intensified by the pandemic.”
The Case-Shiller Home price index reported a smaller nationwide gain of about 9%. The difference is explained by the indices. FHFA only looks at loans which are guaranteed by the US government, so it excludes jumbos and distressed. Affordable homes are in the most demand, and that is where we are seeing the biggest price increases.
The FHFA announced that it will limit cash window purchases for mortgage banks to $1.5 billion per year in order to ensure that smaller banks continue to get access.
The letter agreements codify FHFA conservatorship directives that require the GSEs to purchase loans for cash consideration, and to operate this cash window with non-discriminatory pricing. Additionally, to ensure that the cash window is for the benefit of community lenders, each GSE will limit volume purchased through the cash window to $1.5 billion per lender during any period comprising four calendar quarters.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Honest Joe Biden still up to his old tricks. He’s such a powerful example.
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Wish she had won:
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How obama decided to make a communist DCI is one of the mysteries of our time…
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Brent:
How obama decided to make a communist DCI is one of the mysteries of our time…
Rev Wright, Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis….it isn’t that mysterious. The bigger mystery is how anyone decided to vote for Obama.
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I find it humorous that MSNBC has been hyperventilating about Russia for the whole admin, and has a Bolshevik as their go-go guy.
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Why is this wrong?
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2021/01/26/democrats-move-ban-trump-supporters-federal-jobs-joining-military/
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Smart play.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-biden-sides-with-chicago-teachers-union-to-keep-kids-out-of-school
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Weird.
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/01/judge-blocks-bidens-100-day-deportation-freeze-temporarily/
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Great for kids, great for Chicagoans. Teachers should never have to be face to face with their students again.
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Well it would be a much shittier military, for one. More than just banning folks but a whole new recruiting strategy. And there’s be almost nobody left to actually do actual work when federal contracts get handed out.
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That’s not a mystery. Most people buy stuff with no idea how it works or what it’s made of or how it’s made or much else. Voting is the same. He presented pretty well, seems more appealing than McCain and Romney. Popular culture loved him.
That’s all it takes. Lots of voters are low information. Also the alternatives need to be compelling as well.
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Love Gabbard. Wish we had 100 politicians just like her.
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Mark:
You may be interested to know that, unsurprisingly, the WaPo has decided not to maintain a tracker of Biden’s lies, the way they did for Trump. Of course, even if they maintained the project, there is every reason to think that they would have used entirely different standards for classifying a Biden claim as a “lie”, but they obviously can’t be bothered to maintain even the pretense of even-handedness.
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I mentioned that in almost every response I’ve made to Biden/Trump lying comparison (in addition to pointing out that the lion’s share of Trump’s “falsehoods” are not things that would be called “lies” when Obama or Biden did them).
Which is not a defense of Trump or an attack on Biden, but an attack on the press. and highly biased, narrative-shaping organizations like WaPo that masquerade as “news” organizations.
And yes they would have used entirely different metrics. Trump didn’t deliver on a campaign promise? Lie. Trump said something positive about the economy WaPo didn’t agree with because “reasons”? Lie! Trump claims to have made “the biggest” or “the best” of anything? Lie? Hyperbole? Lie! Spin? Lie! Try to reassure the public, something almost every politician does during at least some crises? LIE!
That’s not a standard they would ever apply to Biden. That would be like expect Fox News doing a hagiographic bio peace about Obama’s miracle presidency in 2005.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/27/bidens-jab-that-foreign-company-contracts-went-up-30-under-trump/
Biden gets three Pinnochios…
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Ugh. Screw WaPo and their paywall!
Might have to start that lie-counting database after all!
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Biden unifies the country by questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with him on federal mask mandates, proclaiming that to disagree with him is “not very American”.
But hey, at least the divisiveness of Trump is a thing of the past.
#priorities
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It’s all pretend. Trump was divisive (and crassly so, which is the real problem). Obama was also divisive. Biden is divisive. I can’t imagine a situation in which a president wouldn’t be divisive because taking sides on issues, controversial or not, is divisive.
And people say all sorts of things “un-American” or “not very American” which is an imaginary metric. You can pull from anything to claim something is “not American”. The Alien and Sedition act seems “not very American” but could also be looked at as an American precedent. Everything is “American” or “Un-American” depending on what part of America and American history you are looking at.
It’s arguable than being subservient to an unrepresentative colonial power is American–because at one point it clear was! 😉
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If you think mask wearing is essential to stop or slow the spread of the virus then you might think a pol who dismisses it is unpatriotic.
If you think that wearing a mask is social justice posturing then you might think a pol who dismisses it is a freedom fighter.
YMMV.
I am among those who think that selective mask wearing [e.g., indoors in crowded areas, closer than two meter personal contact for several minutes] is appropriate for my health and for the health of those around me. So I don’t understand Chip Roy to be a freedom fighter. I see him as making it more difficult to live in America other than in isolation and more difficult to start up the recovery of small biz that relies on personal contact. I would only accuse him of being tone deaf, not unamerican, but I am not unsympathetic to that designation for a pol who should know better. Chip is no dummy and I would bet his own doctor has suggested he wear a mask more often.
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Mark:
I would only accuse him of being tone deaf, not unamerican, but I am not unsympathetic to that designation for a pol who should know better.
There was a time when you thought that for a president to “…suggest he is more “American” then other specific American citizens is despicable.” I guess the rules are president-specific.
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I still think that, rationally. I am a bit emotional about COVID. Rosanne’s cousin Diane had been in a ventilator for 13 days, touch and go, until this morning. Still upsetting.
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You may be atypically immune but I find this to be mostly wired into human nature. We have tribal affiliations and they bias us. It’s how we are wired and it happens primarily subconsciously.
If it didn’t our government would be way better and our society would be way better except that clearly conferred a survival advantage at one point so now we are stuck with it.
I try pretty hard to be consistent but I know I’m not always. It’s tough.
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KW:
You may be atypically immune but I find this to be mostly wired into human nature.
I am not immune, for sure, but I do make an effort to be somewhat self-aware about it.
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https://gizmodo.com/reddit-s-anarchic-investors-to-hedge-funds-i-hope-the-1846135080
I don’t watch CNBC or handle my own trades, but this is fascinating.
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Bizarre. Random reddit users trying to punish stock-shorting hedge fund managers? Seems very odd.
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This is why I always hated trading the short side of the market, and have immense admiration for those who do it well.
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The ironic part of course is the people who are now calling for more regulation of this.
See also
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-27/gamestop-short-squeeze-is-rage-against-the-financial-machine
Matt Taibbi was writing about RobinHood a while back, abet less flatteringly:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/pandemic-villains-robinhood
He also asks for reader comments.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/discuss-gamestop/comments
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Worth reading:
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Why Gamestop isn’t taking this opportunity to do a secondary share offering is beyond me…
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worth watching re: gamestop
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This is the reason:
“Seriously. Motherfuck these people. I sincerely hope they suffer. We want to see the loss porn.”
Another great quote:
“This isn’t a casino. This is a riot.”
It’s really that simple.
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I thought the part about Wendy’s was a nice touch.
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It is. Matt Stoller speculates though that part of this is just the cover story. Since a lot of Robin Hood trades go through brokerages, it looks like some other funds (i.e.Citadel) are front running the trades with their own bets based on the block size of the trades (10,000 shares, etc).
This is also cited as an explanation for why Gamestop still going up even after the retail trades were restricted by Robin Hood & TD AmeriTrade. The other hedge funds are in on it now.
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This reminds me of the late days of the stock market bubble. Daytraders used to ramp stupid stocks all the time.
The funniest one was a company called Cityscape financial. It was a penny stock that went through a bankruptcy. Elliott had gotten involved by buying the distressed bonds and going through the workout. We got new debt in the re-org and a whole bunch of stock which was more or less worthless. We had written it down to zero and weren’t expecting anything from it.
Anyway, the day-trader crowd starting ramping up a company called CitySearch (some internet company). A lot of them screwed up and bought CityScape common stock because it had a similar ticker. They took the stock up from a penny to a buck, and we sold off as much as we could
Every once in a while a lottery ticket hits.
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One of the opinion columnists over on the Washington Post said that r/wallstreetbets is the new Yahoo Finance.
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God this is great.
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