1/26/10

Good morning. My apologies for missing these updates for a few days. I was out of town on Monday and spent all day yesterday catching up. In any case…This morning the market is flat as we are waiting for the FED announcement. New Home Sales came in lower than expected, but didn’t have much impact on the market.
The market has a fair number of reasons to go up or down from here – or maybe just stay put. With some Chinese banks ordered to raise their reserve ratios, Japan's outlook cut to negative by S&P, the UK's Q4 GDP coming in less than expected, and Obama's proposal to put a 3yr freeze on discretionary spending, rates should go down. But we have the uncertainty of the Fed announcement today, this week’s huge Treasury auction, Consumer Confidence coming in higher than expected, and the stock market “hanging tough”, which could all push rates higher. We also had the Case-Schiller index of home prices (which sample 20 US cities) show an increase for the 6th straight month in November. It was only down about 5% from the previous November, the smallest year-over-year decline in two years. In other words…the only thing we know for sure, is today’s rates. Uncertainly will continue to rule.