The average daily trading volume of agency MBS reached $209.9 billion in June, the second highest reading of the year and a sign that liquidity is picking up, according to figures compiled by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. The increase in trading comes despite the fact that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a total of $317.7 billion of new MBS in the second quarter, a 6.1 percent decline from the first quarter. For the six-month period, 2017 holds the edge with volume up 3.5 percent. But it hasn’t been...

ABS investors could see strong returns by employing the “Moneyball” strategy pioneered in Major League Baseball by the Oakland Athletics, according to analysts at Wells Fargo Securities. The strategy, detailed in a book and movie, focuses on certain statistics that managers of the Athletics thought were undervalued by other teams. Wells said the theory can be adapted to the ABS market, with an emphasis on deals that can reliably hit “singles” instead of potentially risky investments that aim for home runs. “With interest rates low and ABS spreads reasonably tight, many market participants are...

Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch said the action by Wells was “the most talked about topic” among market participants recently.

As talks intensify on how to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of limbo, smaller lenders are clamoring to make sure they have a say in how housing-finance reform plays out. Nearly all sides agree that small lenders should continue to have access to the secondary market; how that’s accomplished is a different matter. The Main Street GSE Reform Coalition – an umbrella group made up of small-lender and community-advocacy groups – wants the government-sponsored enterprises to begin rebuilding capital buffers by suspending their dividend payments to the Treasury Department. It also wants...

The proposal to restructure the credit-risk transfer debt-note programs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make them more attractive to real estate investment trusts likely won’t have a negative impact on the credit risk and quality of those deals, Morningstar said in a new report. The proposed changes to Fannie’s Connecticut Avenue Securities and Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk programs would characterize them as real estate mortgage investment conduits. This would allow REITs and some overseas investors to participate more broadly in the programs. Currently, the structure of the government-sponsored enterprises’ popular CRT programs doesn’t meet...

According to Fairholme’s math, the GSEs earn over $15 billion a year, and taxpayers own 80 percent of the companies (via the senior preferred). Berkowitz values the senior stock at $100 billion…

Direct-mail advertising campaigns touting refinances help prompt borrowers to refi, according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve. They added that policymakers should consider making it easier for lenders to target borrowers for refis. Seran Grundl and You Suk Kim, economists at the Fed, authored a recent working paper that examined how borrowers react to receiving ads in the mail for refinances. They said the effect of advertising on consumer mistakes and ...

One negative effect: the costs required to service both performing and nonperforming loans have increased substantially.

The $5.5 billion (to be) paid by RBS should boost GSE earnings big time...

The mortgage servicing rules the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promulgated in the wake of the mortgage market’s collapse brought much-needed stability to the loan servicing arena. But they also have had a host of unplanned side effects that continue to haunt the market to this day. That’s one of the prime takeaways from comments provided by some top lender/servicers and industry trade groups, in response to the CFPB’s announcement that it would begin its five-year assessment of its servicing rules as per the requirements of the Dodd-Frank Act. Wells Fargo said...