It's the Monday after Selection Sunday. For those of you who are college basketball fans, you know that Selection Sunday is the day we all get to find out what teams are in the field of 64 and who, where and when they are playing. This is my favorite sports week of the year and I'll be watching a lot of college basketball Friday through Sunday.
For now, this will be a quick post since the power company is getting ready to shut our power off for about 5 hours to finish some project. Last week was mostly positive as Monday through Wednesday were all up days. Thursday was slightly down and Friday closed where it began. Today we got some more disappointing news with February Industrial Production coming in at .1 vs. estimates of .3. Additionally, the previous month's reading was revised lower. The March NAHB Home Builders' Sentiment Index was 53 vs. estimates of 56 - a reading over 50 is positive. This means that while builders are still bullish for the year, they aren't as positive as they were last month.
In all, this news is helping bonds off to a good start this week with the FNMA benchmark bond currently up 19 basis points which, as you know if you read my posts or understand how bonds work, is good for rates. Tomorrow we get building permits and housing starts and Wednesday could be a big day with the FOMC press conference and the Fed interest rate decision - I'm not expecting any changes to the Fed Funds rate but I'm hoping for some more insight as to when they might start raising it.
That's it for now. Make it a great day and get your brackets filled out if you're into that sort of thing. We've had a family competition for years and we all filled out 4 brackets yesterday. I'm sure I'm going to win - until my wife wins with her scientific analysis based on the colors of the teams uniform and their mascots. She also looks at wins and losses but doesn't care about strength of schedule or RPI or record against top 25 teams or any of that. I do usually win, though.
Feel free to contact me if I can help with anything mortgage-related - 702-812-1214.
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