Happy Friday,

Bonds opened flat this morning with the ten-year yielding .85 and the Mortgage bonds vacillating on both sides of unchanged. The Markit PMI and Markit services index both came close to last month although I am not sure anyone knows what these metrics really point to. The stock market is down a bit. The opportunity for a stimulus bill to be approved before the election is all but over. The last presidential debate is in the record books and the election is 11 days away. I will leave it to you to decide who won last night. Here’s an interesting note, equity markets have risen on average 7.4% after an election when the incumbent party loses the White House. That is irrespective of the White House turning from red to blue or blue to red.  I do expect volatility to rise in the coming days. We still have no firm bottom in place for bonds, so you should stay locked until we have a bottom to bounce from.

We all know rates are low and refinances have been on a feverish pace. Black Knight shows there are 32 million homes that could save 75 basis points in rate by refinancing. Low rates could continue well into 2021 especially if the primary-secondary spread narrows. But as I mentioned yesterday, all bets are off if the Fed stops buying Mortgage bonds.

We all also know that the pandemic is driving a major boom in the housing market that’s breaking all kinds of records and exposing a very uneven economic recovery between the haves and the have-nots. The most dramatic increases are happening at the top end of the market — sales of homes costing $1 million and up have more than doubled since last year.

Irrespective of whether the city is Blue or Red, it is unconscionable that the 20 cities with the largest police forces in the country have paid out more than $2 billion to residents due to misconduct claims or civil-rights violations since 2015, including allegations of excessive force, wrongful detention, or other situations that resulted in death or permanent injury. Claims are always footed by city taxpayers, and in cities like New York, which paid out $1.1 billion since 2015, police settlements come out of the pocket of programs that would otherwise fund affordable housing or education programs, says the city’s comptroller, Scott Stringer. New York launched a program to track claims against the city, put precincts with many complaints on notice, and work with the city’s law department to improve training and policies.

Please remain safe and healthy, enjoy the weekend and first, make today great!