For years, officials at the Federal Reserve seemed nonchalant about coming up with a final exit strategy for the U.S. central bank’s massive holdings of agency MBS and debt and Treasury Securities, currently valued at approximately $4.5 trillion. But now, in relatively short order, the prospect of the Fed beginning to reduce its holdings has become a “thing” – so much so, in fact, that officials there reportedly are starting to put together just such a plan. The likelihood of such a move suddenly got much stronger when the Commerce Department announced late last week that the personal-consumption expenditures price index rose 2.1 percent from a year ago. The Fed has been striving to achieve 2 percent inflation for at least the last five years, and now appears to have the green light it has been waiting for. According to various press reports, the Fed’s plan would entail...

Wells Fargo’s legal woes are continuing after a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last week ordered the company to face several lawsuits by institutional investors alleging MBS fraud. U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that Wells Fargo must face five lawsuits by a few dozen funds that are holding the bank liable for losses incurred after the MBS they purchased lost value due to the financial crisis. The plaintiffs include...

Investors in Taiwan held $208.1 billion of agency MBS, non-agency MBS and ABS at the midway point of 2016, making it the largest overseas investor in the market, according to preliminary Treasury Department data. Taiwan increased its holdings of U.S. MBS and ABS by 9.6 percent from the midway point in 2015, a time period during which overall foreign investment was flat. Treasury releases annual estimates of U.S. MBS and ABS by individual foreign countries as of the middle of each year. The estimates include both government-related and private-sector investors domiciled in the country. Mainland China had been...[Includes one data table]

There was little change in the amount of agency MBS held by the Federal Reserve in 2016 compared to the previous year, although the account generated a whopping $46.3 billion in net interest income last year. The 2016 net interest gains from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MBS were down slightly from 2015, when the Fed reported $49.0 billion, according to an independent annual audit of the Fed. Conducted by KPMG, the audit estimated...

FHA-insured jumbo lending fell slightly in the fourth quarter of 2016 although year-over-year results were a lot better. Production of conforming-jumbo purchase and refinance loans insured by the FHA slipped 0.9 percent in the fourth quarter, a slight bump on the way to an annual jumbo origination total of $26.9billion. Year-over-year, FHA jumbo production was up 5.6 percent from 2015. Conforming-jumbo loans represented 9.8 percent of FHA loans securitized last year, according to data compiled by affiliated newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance. Purchase mortgages comprised 64.9 percent of jumbo loans insured by FHA in 2016 and 98.7 percent were fixed-rate loans. Nonbanks comprised the top five FHA jumbo lenders. Wells Fargo, which closed the year with $423.8 million in FHA jumbo originations, was in sixth place. Quicken Loans led the field with $802.5 million of ... [ Charts ]

Mortgage lenders continue to gain share in the home-purchase market as investors and other cash buyers have become less prevalent and the supply of distressed properties declines. Some 562,000 new homes were sold in 2016, according to the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mortgage financing was used for 95.0 percent of the sales, up from a 92.0 percent share the previous year. The cash share of new home sales hit...

The average daily trading volume in agency MBS declined to $202.4 billion in February, one of the worst readings over the past six months, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. In January, volume was a bit healthier at $229.8 billion, but that was before concerns began to mount about President Trump’s business agenda and how successful the new White House might be in rolling back regulations – financial and otherwise. As Inside MBS & ABS went to press this week, fears were...

Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland have agreed to pay investors $165 million to resolve allegations of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage loans underlying securities issued by now-defunct subprime lender NovaStar Mortgage. The agreement was announced last week subject to approval by Judge Deborah Batts of the U.S. District Court for the Second District of New York, according to a report by Reuters. At issue is $7.7 billion in residential MBS delivered into various trusts and sold to investors, including pension funds, prior to the housing crash. A multi-employer union pension plan led by the New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund filed...

Thanks to strong growth in the agency market, the supply of single-family MBS outstanding continued to grow over the final three months of 2016, a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals. Agency MBS outstanding pushed to a new record, $6.034 trillion, as of the end of last year. The biggest gainer continued to be Ginnie Mae, which reported a 2.2 percent increase in the fourth quarter and a 7.7 percent gain for the year. Freddie Mac matched Ginnie’s fourth-quarter increase, but its year-to-date gain was smaller, 4.2 percent. Fannie Mae had...[Includes two data tables]

For the third time in as many years, the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points this week, as widely expected – only this time, the Fed didn’t wait until the very end of the year. The FOMC’s revised projections are for two additional quarter-point rate hikes later this year, three next year and three or four the year after. World stock indexes rallied...