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Is anyone sleeping?

Tim Lindsey

Happy Market Update!

I don’t sleep. Well, I sleep. But not very well. I’m pretty sure that my last full night of sleep was in November of 1958. Well it feels that long ago! My kid goes to bed around 7:30-8…and when I left the house this morning, he was still asleep at 6:45am. That’s like 45 hours or something. Right now most of you are thinking, this guy works on my mortgages?

But seriously, when I can’t sleep, I try to listen to the Calm app, say a prayer (begging to sleep), and ultimately read Twitter…er…X. Don’t get excited. X is not what you think it is…it’s the new name for Twitter. Come on, people. Anyway, because it’s 1:30 in the morning, I see posts about what not sleeping does to your mind and body. Then I see lists of things to do to sleep. I’m not lying when I say that I am doing 90% of these things. (10% is probably don’t drink wine…and that’s not happening!) I can usually get to sleep, but staying asleep is the problem. Who out there can help me with this?

The rumor is that it’s really bad for diabetes, weight loss and overall stress. These things I fight against every day. Most of my family, the blood ones, fight or have diabetes. I don’t like shots…so getting that is not an option. Weight loss? I burn more calories now than I ever have (at least in my adult life). Stress? That’s the thing. I’m stressed when I’m busy…and I’m stressed when I’m not. Is that because I just care more than I should? At least I’m caring about something…unlike our Fed and DC.


Last week was the annual Jackson Hole meeting, as I indicated in last week’s email. Powell’s speech didn’t do much to move anything in any direction. So that’s good, I guess. (It could have been ugly for us in the mortgage world.) But I really enjoyed this quote: “As is often the case, we are navigating by the stars under cloudy skies…” Mm-hmm, I see. So you have no idea where we are heading? I love this guidance. Why? It’s the most honest thing we have heard from the powers-that-be. But it’s also scary as hell. So are we getting another move up next month? I don’t think we have enough info yet. We get the BLS jobs report from the government this week. I’m guessing he is watching those numbers Friday as well as PCE (personal consumption expenditures) Thursday. Then we get inflation numbers after the Labor Day holiday. Once all of that comes in, we’ll see if we get a pause or another move.


Cause for the pause? These next two pics. First up? Tuesday’s JOLTS Job Openings for July. A huge miss. While they were forecasting (For) 9.465M, which was a decline, we received 8.827M, a significant decline. The 2nd pic is a chart, courtesy of MBS Highway, that shows the job openings since 2018. While we are above the pre-pandemic numbers, we think a lot of those jobs are now part time. So it’s a different mix of jobs that don’t usually offer things like benefits. Also in the first pic, the consumer confidence went down after several up months. I think that’s all of you proving at buying goods and services might be headed out. Is this Bidenomics? I’m no economist…but yes.


Sticking with our weekly narrative that not all stocks are the same, I hope you own META, AMZA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL, TSLA, and NVDA. They are crushing the S&P500. But even those stocks are showing signs of weakness. And the other 493 companies are fairing even worse (albeit still up on the year!). If these take a dive, watch out below for the markets! If not, “to the moon!” as the meme stocks say.

How’s the mortgage loan officer world? If you ask me, I’ll give you the raspberry. You ask some others and they might say, oh, it’s tough…it’s a grind, but we are doing great. No they are not. It’s okay to tell people, it’s tough as nails out there. But the strong survive, right? Here’s the truth. I started in 03-04. I’ve been saying that it’s not like 08-09, but it feels worse in a different way. Well, here you go.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, France just continues to piss me off. Why? Saved them twice and still no respect. But this…this may be the bottom for them. Un-freaking-believable. As reported by the Insider:


Meanwhile, China is still falling apart. Think our consumer confidence is bad? Here’s what they tell us (it’s probably worse). Not only have they not been optimistic since early 2022, they just took a turn for the worse as they were moving to less pessimistic.

I don’t care where you stand on Covid and masking. Not true, but I need to get through this part. I thought this post from the CDC telling us masks don’t work for smoke…and the coronavirus being smaller, IMO, proving masks don’t work, why are we hearing about masks mandates coming back? Am I wrong? Or are others losing their mind (or trying to control us). I’m a patriot through and through…and yes, if I thought I had a potentially harmful disease, I would not sit next to you in a restaurant. I’m an actual adult who does not need to hear a President speak to us and say: “our patience is wearing thin”. Regardless of your vax status, booster status or rebel hiding in the woods status, we should all be able to agree that if we wanted to be scolded by a parent, I’d go get another one. That’s not how you lead. Find a different solution…or, as I ask my 4 year old, choose a different way to ask (the answer might still be no though).


10yr: So far, our recent high is starting to look like a double top. “And there was much rejoicing…yyyeeaaahhh.” Email me with the title of that movie…without looking it up, and I’m buying you a beer. (Honor system). Bear employees do not count. That’s McDonalds’ rules, not mine. We are right back at our former resistance at about 4.10. Because we are above it, it will now act as support. So we need to break and stay below that for any more reward. We are also at the bottom of an upward moving leg (the 45 degree red line). So big area for us. Come on jobs report! Help a brother out!

MBS: Remember up is lower rates. This is just 3 months, but I like it, relatively speaking. We are up above that 98.08 level which looks like we broke as resistance yesterday and conveniently stayed above it. Now we need to stay above that blue line (that’s the 25 day moving average). Best pricing in mortgages in two weeks. Long way to go.

Listen, I know you are all feeling sad and sorry for my inability to sleep. But let me leave you with this good news…the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that “The exact Age when you make your best financial decisions” is “on average, 53 and 54.” I am stoked! So I’m going to get better for another 4-5 years? Yes!! I knew getting older had to be more than just drink better and older wines. Well, I guess I really didn’t think past that. But whatever. This is excellent to hear. So if you have mortgage questions, or need to work with someone in the mortgage world, the WSJ just told you I’m your guy. My team is your people. If you work with a different Bear LO, you are in good hands. You only get me once a week. Imagine how much of this they get! They are SO lucky. Honestly, I think part of being better at money is that we have more of it by this age. And we should be well into thinking about retirement. I started thinking about retirement the first time I screwed up a loan 20 years ago. Haha. Ugh. But seriously, if you are young, look to us old people. We do actually want to help you. It’s more fun sharing that wine with people who appreciate it too.


What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.


Tim Lindsey

President/Sr. Loan Officer

Bear Mortgage Inc.


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