Jobless Claims and Missed Payments
Stocks spent most of the day in negative territory, then recovered, and retreated – ending down 105 points. The economy continues to dominate the thought in stocks with Microsoft announcing layoffs for the first time.
Bonds continued to lose ground (increase interest rates) – and this is hitting mortgage rates hard right now.
The Dollar, oil, gasoline and gold went sideways today.
In the news today…..
Jobless applications hit 589,000 last week, and this is very bad news for future unemployment. More companies are initiating layoffs as they project a very poor year.
December Housing Starts were down 15.5% to 550,000 units. During all of 2008 Housing Starts were down 33.3% – probably not enough to stem the tide of houses available for sale – continuing to push the price of houses down. Home Permits were down 10.7% in December – and this helps, but isn’t enough slowdown to stem the house price slide.
One in 10 homeowners are behind one payment or more, or are in foreclosure. Just consider this statistic for a moment. That is a massive number, and it pushes all home values downward. This number is increasing with time. We haven’t seen the high point of “bad” mortgages yet.
The 30 Year Mortgage Rate is 5.25%, and the 15 Year Mortgage Rate is 4.99%. This is a very large jump in interest rates this past week that mirrors the increase in the 10 Year Treasury Bond interest rate.
Here are Today’s numbers:
Dow Jones 30 Industrial – 8123 (down 105 points)
10 Year Treasury Bond – 2.59% (up 0.07%)
Euro – $1.3004
Gold – $859 (up $9)
Oil – $43.67 (up $0.12)
Gasoline – $1.09 (down $0.08)
