#mortgage-backed-securities

#mortgage-backed-securities

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently addressed the National Association for Business Economics conference, indicating that the central bank would not intervene in secondary mortgage markets to ease mortgage rates, contrary to some suggestions for boosting homebuyer affordability. The discussion revolved around the Fed's efforts to reduce its significant holdings of securities, notably mortgage-backed securities (MBS), accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic through quantitative easing measures.

Part of the decline can be attributed to a continued gradual compression of the " mortgage spread" -the difference between the 10-year Treasury yield and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate-as some investors slowly regain their appetite for mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and help fill the void left by the Federal Reserve when it stopped buying MBS in spring 2022. The other factor putting downward pressure on mortgage rates-and long-term yields-has been a recent stretch of softer-than-expected labor market data and financial market's growing expectation that the Fed will shift policy from restrictive to neutral.

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