Meanwhile, the leaders of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee have introduced S. 1751, a six-year extension bill with relatively minor reforms, as far as the Realtors are concerned.
The average daily trading volume in agency MBS fell to just $200.5 billion in July, the weakest reading of the year, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. Compared to the prior month, MBS trading fell by 4.5 percent. The strongest month of the year came in January at $229.8 billion. In general, a lower reading on average daily trading volume means...
In the first half of 2017, the dollar volume of credit card ABS issued was nearly three times the issuance seen in the first half of last year. However, analysts at Fitch Ratings suggest that issuers of consumer finance ABS aren’t relying too heavily on the structured finance market for their funding. The rating service said increased issuance of ABS could affect some issuers’ credit profiles if it leads to a sustained increase in secured wholesale funding sources. “However, we believe that this trend does not yet represent a structural shift, with many consumer finance-oriented financial institutions raising consumer ABS issuance opportunistically to take advantage of attractive pricing and to enhance the liquidity of their ABS programs,” the rating service said. Some $24.38 billion of credit card ABS were issued...
August is turning out to be an unfortunate month for WMC Mortgage and Deutsche Bank in terms of continuing legacy MBS litigation, but an auspicious one for Bank of New York Mellon, which won a favorable verdict in a residential MBS case. On Aug. 8, Judge Charles Haight of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut denied defendant WMC Mortgage’s motion for partial summary judgment in Law Debenture Trust Co. of New York v. WMC Mortgage. The case involves a pool of 5,162 residential loans originated by WMC which were securitized in 2006 and sold to the trust for $1 billion, according to the law firm Orrick. The lender was...
Attorneys for Fairholme Funds filed another motion this week requesting to view about 1,500 government documents in a lawsuit challenging the government’s net-worth sweep of profits at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And late last week, the government produced three more documents that were originally classified as “privileged.” In the new motion, the Fairholme attorneys asked the Federal Claims Court to use the “quick peek” procedure for more than 1,000 documents dating back to May 2012. These are among the many documents the plaintiffs say the government is still withholding under the deliberative process and bank examination privileges. It’s...
The Federal Reserve this week released the minutes of the July meeting of its Open Market Committee, providing more detail and color regarding the central bank’s deliberations on shrinking its enormous holdings of agency MBS and the future path and timing of interest rate adjustments. FOMC members started their portfolio deliberations by discussing the appropriate time to start reducing the Fed’s securities holdings, a plan that had been formally announced in June. “Participants generally agreed that, in light of their current assessment of economic conditions and the outlook, it was appropriate to signal that implementation of the program likely would begin relatively soon, absent significant adverse developments in the economy or in financial markets,” according to the minutes. Many members of the committee noted...
According to our calculation, Fannie common now trades at $2.80, a 20.17 percent improvement since the close of 2Q17, while Freddie’s value rose 21.08 percent to $2.70.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s planned review of the ability-to-repay rule prompted comment letters from trade groups representing various industry participants along with individual comment letters from JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. The big banks were critical of certain aspects of the ATR rule and requested changes that could increase originations of non-agency mortgages. “The ATR/qualified mortgage rule is not working as desired,” said Michael Weinbach, a ...
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