We’re back again, and it’s been another pretty crazy week.
On the Greenlit side, we’ve been so focused on getting the Florida data up and running that we never really got around to putting together a proper Greenlit Update this week.
That doesn’t mean nothing happened though.
We made a bunch of backend improvements that should make the platform cleaner, faster, and more reliable, and we’re still pushing forward on the Jacksonville data work. We’ll have more to share on all of that soon.
In the meantime, if you haven’t signed up as a beta user yet, you can do that here:
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Alright, let’s get into it.
Economic Note
Well, there goes that.
Rates actually started making a little progress this week as oil prices came back down, taking some pressure off inflation expectations and helping the 10 year Treasury move lower.
Which is still kind of crazy when you think about it.
You wouldn’t normally think the price of oil has much to do with your mortgage rate, but when energy prices start moving aggressively, the bond market immediately starts thinking about inflation. And when inflation expectations rise, Treasury yields usually aren’t far behind.
So when oil prices started falling earlier this week, bonds finally got a little breathing room and mortgage rates started working their way back down.
Then PCE came out.
Headline PCE, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, came in at 3.7% year over year, slightly above the 3.6% economists were expecting.
Core PCE, which removes food and energy, came in at 3.3%, right in line with expectations.
So this wasn’t exactly a terrible report.
But apparently “not terrible” isn’t good enough for this market right now.
The hotter headline number was enough to wipe out most of the progress we had made, and by Friday the 10 year was back around 4.73%, pushing daily mortgage rates up to roughly 6.81%.
And now we move on to employment.
The August Employment Situation comes out next Friday, and after the weakness we saw in last month’s report, this one is going to get plenty of attention.
But ultimately, all eyes are moving toward the September 15–16 FOMC meeting.
The Fed now has inflation still sitting well above its 2% target, another employment report coming next week, and CPI arriving just days before the meeting.
So the next couple of weeks should give us a much better idea of whether the Fed is comfortable sitting still, or whether the market is about to get another reason to push rates higher.
At this point, we’re just hoping the market finds something it actually likes.
Market Reports
Greenlit Updates
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