Correlation: Mortgage Rates Vs. Mortgage Applications Vs. Pending Home Sales

Just discovered another correlation on Zero Hedge. If mortgage rates go up, lending becomes more difficult, so people stop applying for new mortgages. This means there is a negative correlation between mortgage rates and mortgage applications.

When mortgage applications go down, not a lot of homes will be sold. This means that home sales will go down. As suggested by the following chart, there is a correlation here between mortgage applications and pending home sales.

If it's true that interest rates and mortgage rates will go up, you can bet that we will have another housing crisis. Home sales go down. All those homes will be coming onto the market, while nobody wants them.

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Adjustable Rate Mortgage Vs. Federal Funds Rate

This page is created to monitor the 1 Year Adjustable Rate Mortgage Average Vs. Effective Federal Funds Rate.

The Fed Funds Rate (red chart) sets the short term rates, in particular the 1 Year Adjustable Mortgage Rates.

Whenever the Federal Reserve increases/decreases the lending rate between banks, the short term rates will follow suit.

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30 Year Fixed Mortgage Rate Vs. 30 Year U.S. Treasury Yield

This page is created to monitor the 30 year Conventional Fixed Mortgage Rate Vs. 30 year U.S. Treasury Yield.

There is an obvious historical correlation here. The thing to watch here is that the mortgage rate (blue chart) should always be higher than the treasury yield (green chart).

When this is not the case, U.S. treasury yields should decline / mortgage yields should increase.

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Correlation: 30 Yr. Treasury Yield Vs. 30 Yr. Mortgage Rates

Just wanted to add another couple of correlations to my collection. We will learn about fixed and adjustable rate mortgages. These are correlated against treasury yields and fed funds rate respectively.

1) Conventional (Fixed) Mortgage Rate Vs. Treasury Yields

As you can see mortgage rates are always higher than treasury yields because U.S. treasuries are considered much safer than mortgages.

Chart 1: 30 Yr. Treasury Yield Vs. 30 Yr. Mortgage Rate

2) Adjustable Mortgage Rate Vs. Fed Funds Rate
Adjustable Rate Mortgages on the other hand are linked to the Fed Funds Rate.

Chart 2: 1 Yr. Adjustable Rate Mortgage Vs. Fed Funds Rate

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A Detailed Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

Just by having heated (and uncomfortable) discussions with seekingalpha commenters I learn new things. This is what you get when you write financial articles without any financial background.

But there are positive things coming from discussions.
Today I found a very nice interactive chart to follow the Federal Reserve's balance sheet (Chart 1).
You can play with the interactive chart here:
http://clevelandfed.org/research/data/credit_easing/index.cfm

Chart 1: Detailed Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

And what's very interesting is that the federal reserve has massively increased their treasury holdings. It's no wonder that bond yields are going down in the market. It won't be long when the federal reserve's balance sheet consists only of treasuries and mortgage backed securities, which are the most risky assets in the world.

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Composition of Fed Balance Sheet Indicates Low Interest Rates For Eternity

I have been talking a lot about the federal reserve balance sheet. But what is it composed of? And how did it evolve higher?

Chart 1 gives the composition. You can see that QE1 and QE2 were mainly bond purchases (light brown area). QE3 should be another round of bond purchases and should expand the light brown area again.

Second, the spike in 2008 was mainly lending to financial institutions at the time of the banking collapse. This lending has been paid off in 2010.

But the most interesting part is the mortgage backed securities area in brown. In that period, congress passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which authorized the Treasury to purchase mortgage-backed securities. As a consequence, the brown area increased in size at the same time when lending to financials decreased. That means that the federal reserve has bought approximately $US 1 trillion of mortgage backed securities in an attempt to support the housing market. It didn't do much to the housing market. New home sales and housing starts were flat, but the housing market index improved a bit though.

I will point out the importance of convexity to make my case of lower interest rates in the foreseeable future.

Chart 1: Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

To read the analysis go here.

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