Thanks to rising long-term interest rates, the negative yield curve that investors fretted about two weeks ago has been snuffed out, causing some market watchers to worry less about a coming recession. As Inside MBS & ABS went to press, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was at 2.51%, compared to 2.33% for the two-year and 2.44% for the three-month T-bill. As recently as March 25, the 10-year was at 2.36%, lower than short-term rates. Opinions differ, but some analysts ...

The Federal Reserve lost its top ranking among residential MBS investors during the fourth quarter of 2018, giving way to the commercial banking sector, according to a new In-side MBS & ABS analysis. [Includes three data charts.]

Real estate investment trusts increased their holdings of agency MBS during the fourth quarter of 2018, capping a solid year of growth, according to an Inside MBS & ABS analysis. [Includes one data chart.]

In his semi-annual testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs this week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell finally put a number to his talk of “normalizing” the central bank’s balance sheet. He described a balance of $1 trillion as “a reasonable starting point, an estimate of where we might end up.”

Through the first two months of 2019, the nation’s mortgage-investing real estate investment trusts have rolled out plans to raise a combined $1.92 billion by selling additional shares of common to the public, according to offering documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Commercial banks and thrifts reversed a year-long trend during the fourth quarter of 2018 and increased their holdings of single-family MBS, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. [Includes two data charts.]

New Residential Investment Corp., one of the fastest growing mortgage real estate investment trusts in the U.S., has an overseas fan in Nan Shan Life Insurance Co. of Taipei City, Taiwan.

In a bid to expand its access to rental housing credit, Redwood Trust last week announced plans to partner on a deal to acquire up to $1 billion in whole loans from Freddie Mac.

Depending on what type of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac reform occurs in the next few years, there’s a growing concern in the market that foreign investors — and others — may shy away from their MBS unless there’s an explicit guarantee on the securities.