“Six out of seven dwarves are not Happy.” Much of life is based on probability, and/or a gamble. For example, I can’t believe that I put my entire 401(k) into bitcoin last summer. Bitcoin has since plummeted… I thought that the only thing it could do is go up! Looks like I’ll be working til I’m 90. But back to the topic. Casino owners make a fortune off of people who are convinced that they’re going to win… but we all know that the dollars don’t always work that way. Las Vega

“Rules? In a knife fight? No rules! ” Sounds sensible, at least to Butch Cassidy and his opponent. Donald Trump’s Fed nominee sounds sensible (lots below), but he and his family suing the IRS and others for $10 billion not so much. There’s a lot of sensible thinking going on out there in our biz. Yesterday in the Thought Leadership section, attorney Mitch Kider addressed the “Rule of Law” and what he believes is important to the industry. In a new article featured in Chrism

Fans of MASH know that Alan Alda turned 90 yesterday, and the remaining actors from the show joined him on the beach . When you reach a certain age you don’t care about the employment picture. Amazon laying off another 16,000, as announced this week, won’t help anyone’s “the economy is doing great” argument. As economist Elliot Eisenberg points out, “The most disturbing piece of information from last week’s income data is the confirmation of a complete lack of income growth o

“Did you hear what NASA's new slogan will be once its budget is cut? ‘NASA: The Sky's The Limit’” If you’re a conference organizer, do you have a catchy slogan for the event? That certainly seems to be expected. Fannie Mae has a slogan (“Powering America’s Housing” or “Supporting America’s Housing,” depending on who you ask) as does Freddie Mac (“We Make Home Possible”). The two have been in the news lately after President Trump proposed his “representatives” will buy $200 bi

Here in Northern Nevada, as well as places like Alaska and California, mining for precious metals occupies a good chunk of history. Early miners, and Yukon Cornelius , would be stunned at how investors and speculators have flocked to silver and gold, and how the U.S. dollar has declined in value. Put another way, it takes many more dollars now to equal the value of an ounce of gold. When other countries have seen their currency devalued for various reasons, it typically does

“I am getting so sick of millennials and their attitude. Always walkin’ around like they rent the place.” When thinking about things like politics or housing, or many things, there’s the adage, “Follow the money.” For example, did you know that Ozempic was created thanks to research on Gila monsters, the only venomous lizard in the US? Their venom slows digestion and curbs cravings for hours. Ozempic, as it turns out, is not manufactured in the U.S. but is made by Novo Nordis

It doesn’t take the current storm sweeping through parts of the U.S. to make us remember that lenders, and everyone, are impacted by the climate and the weather that comes from the climate. You’re not going to have a home inspection when there’s four feet of snow on the ground. Is a borrower going to make their payment if their house was flooded? Americans are concerned about climate change but seem to believe that climate change happens to some other person who isn’t them.

Is anyone locking loans in this storm? Or looking at open houses? Some things can be intentional, or unintentional… like gleeking . President Trump suing Jamie Dimon and Chase yesterday for $5 billion over “ political debanking ” is intentional. Having an email address is intentional; the emails that are delivered are unintentional: I have one email reserved for weight loss miracle drugs, opportunities to become a millionaire with crypto, and eastern European women who want t

One day of bond market move can wipe out any price benefit from the Agencies buying $200 billion of Agency MBS. In his Davos speech yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, President Trump argued that homeownership is central to the American dream and criticized large institutional investors for driving up prices, saying “homes are built for people, not for corporations,” and touting an executive order aimed at restricting such investors from buying single-family

While “Sell America” goes on, or at least the perception of it, outside our borders, leading to bond prices going down and rates going up, in this country we are learning the difference between a pardon, a commutation, and clemency. I continue to hear how fraud, especially occupancy fraud, in residential lending is on the upswing. President Donald Trump commuted the five-year prison sentence (freed, but conviction stands) of a New York real estate manager convicted of fraudul

“Rob, last year the press seemed convinced that President Trump’s tariffs would lead to inflation which would hurt mortgage rates. That proved not to be the case. Now comes word that President Trump’s quest for Greenland is a personal retaliation of him not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and that the tariffs will, once again, drive inflation and mortgage rates higher. Is this true?” Geopolitical events can impact interest rates, but let’s hope the uncertainty and impact is

While underwriters are abuzz about the Trump administration delaying its plan to withhold wages for student loan borrowers in default, in other news mixing politics and the lending business, forget about President Trump complaining about Joe Biden using autopen, which has been used by presidents since WWII. What about voices? Plenty of people (humans) can imitate Donald Trump. So can AI, and Fannie Mae admitted his voice was AI generated in Fannie’s new commercial . Yes, Fan

Yeah, I know that this is a daily commentary on the world of mortgages, often about how companies are evolving, leveraging technology, and constantly changing their product in their pursuit of customers. How about the opposite business model? Unlike just about every other online business today, Craigslist is a completely honest, straightforward business. There is no hidden toll or price (your data) for “free” (the company makes revenue elsewhere) and the transaction is straig

How are we halfway done with January already? Wasn’t it just New Year’s? Some lenders slow down in the winter, but I am hearing reports of great Decembers and Januarys. Wanna fire up your sales team? Here’s an article: “The golden handcuffs are slipping in the U.S. housing market.” As industry vets knew they would eventually, borrowers with “once-in-a-lifetime” rates are refinancing, or selling houses with those mortgages on them. There is a lot of news and change, both loc

“Last weekend I was invited by a female janitor to smoke some weed in her apartment, but I politely declined. I can’t deal with high maintenance women.” While rumors swirl that Jerome Powell is paying his own legal bills while dealing with the DOJ, and the Administration is ruminating on using 401(k) or 529 funds to buy a home (no one needs cash when they retire, or money for higher education, right?), in the land of “concrete news” the office-to-apartment and condo conversio

“There is going to be a merger between FedEx and UPS. Yep, they're going to be called ‘FedUp.’” Perhaps Saks , which declared bankruptcy last night, will merge or be acquired by another retailer. In our world, no one expects lender and/or vendor mergers and acquisitions to diminish in 2026, and in today’s Mortgage Matters at 2PM ET, presented by Lenders One, Garth Graham, Senior Partner at STRATMOR Group , will break down key M&A trends, recap the pivotal developments of 202

Today’s Capital Markets Wrap  (3PM ET) will cover how mortgage rates may be impacted by the lack of a traditional flight to quality despite rising international unrest, alongside proposed limits on institutional SFR purchases, rate sheet changes, recent presidential commentary on GSE bond buying, and… the proposed credit card interest cap. “Rob, yesterday’s Commentary had a piece on President Trump’s proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent. Will it impact len

Have you ever heard of Lotus Bakeries? Me neither. It is a good lesson for lenders in taking one successful product, or division, and expanding it. Or for individual originators to take their skills and expand them to help clients. Lotus is responsible for Biscoff cookies , which many mortgage road warriors know as an in-flight snack from American and especially Delta Airlines, the latter of which serves 70 million packets of Biscoff cookies annually and counts it as its mos

Forget the U.S. Government focusing on the Fed’s Lisa Cook or New York’s Letitia James. President Trump and Bill Pulte (on Bloomberg this morning) say that they know nothing about this, but federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and members of the Fed have been subpoenaed. The official reason is regarding the renovation of the Fed’s headquarters . But it may be more directed at Fed independence, and Powell publicly

“My dad spent all day putting a clock on his belt. It was a waist of time.” It seems like we just turned our clocks back, and then there was the winter solstice, and now we’re already two months away from this year’s spring DST which will take place Sunday, March 8, when clocks will “spring forward” an hour giving people in most states in the U.S. an extra hour of sunlight in the evening. Changing our clocks is not a “natural” event, unlike floods are earthquakes and fires. A