Wachovia is promoting an 8-month CD special rate to residents of California in today’s paper.  You can view the ad online here.

Comments Off | Filed under: CDs, General
Posted on February 28th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

As we mentioned 2 weeks ago the advance GDP release made several assumptions that proved to be incorrect. Therefore, the preliminary release (GDP release order is: Advance, Preliminary, Final) has revised the advance number down from 3.5% to 2.2% – a HUGE revision. This is more in line with what we expected. We now have 3 [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: General, Gross Domestic Product
Posted on February 28th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

The Washington Post reports – Freddie Mac to Clamp Down on Risky Loans
Freddie Mac, the second biggest buyer of U.S. mortgages, plans to toughen its standards and stop buying certain types of risky loans that have been linked to a high number of defaults.
This is latest indication of rising concern about problems in the subprime [...]

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Posted on February 27th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

The March 2007 Brinker Fixed Income Advisor is scheduled to be mailed to subscribers on Saturday March 3rd.

Comments Off | Filed under: General, Investment Letter
Posted on February 26th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

Read this: Tanta: Mortgage Servicing for UberNerds
Servicers have two major types of servicing portfolio: loans they service for themselves and loans they service for other investors. In accounting terms, the “compensation” is the same, meaning that even if you are the noteholder, you pay yourself to service the loans in the same way that an [...]

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Posted on February 24th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

Here is a summary of the highest yielding CD rates available at the moment…
Superior Savings of New England has a 5.6% APY 6-month CD
Pentagon Federal Credit Union has the following CD (they call them Money Market Certificates):

3 & 4 years @ 5.5% APY
5 years @ 5.75%
7 years @ 6%

Anyone can join the credit union by first joining [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: CDs, General, Money Markets
Posted on February 24th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

The SeekingAlpha website has a housing market section which contains quite a few good articles on the current housing market.

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Posted on February 23rd, 2007 by Bob Brinker

In December 2006 a new website appeared that keeps tabs on mortgage lenders that go away – The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter

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Posted on February 21st, 2007 by Bob Brinker

The lastest housing data from the Census Bureau does not paint a favorable picture. In fact, both starts and completions continue to drop significantly. Calculated Risk once again does an excellent job reviewing the data and pointing out the highly correlated effect between housing completions and residential construction. As we make our way through 2007, we [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: Employment, General
Posted on February 16th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

Here is a good article discussing how many of the sub-prime mortgage lenders are now taking their medicine by Caroline Baum at Bloomberg.
Subprime loans carry rates 2 or 3 percentage points higher than those extended to prime borrowers. They accounted for about 20 percent of new mortgages last year and 13.5 percent of the total home loans [...]

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Posted on February 15th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

The 4th Quarter 2006 GDP figure was an upside surprise to just about everyone that tracks the GDP data. It is now evident the number may have been overstated by as much as 1%. I would expect to see the revision somewhere in the 2.5% to 3% range once the final numbers come in. Below are a [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: General, Gross Domestic Product
Posted on February 15th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

Wells Fargo is promoting its latest offer to investors of 100 commission-free online trades each year. Expect to see competition heat up from other online brokers as the costs of trading continue to plumet. There is also talk of comission-free ETF trades from a variety of online brokerages. This removes the major disadvantage of ETFs [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: Brokerages, Exchange Traded Funds, General
Posted on February 15th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

An interesting article that reveals why government price controls typically fail. A massive influx of petrodollars obviously compounds the problem.
Such shortages have sporadically appeared with items from milk to coffee since early 2003, when Chávez began regulating prices for 400 basic products as a way to counter inflation and protect the poor.
Yet inflation has soared [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: General, Inflation
Posted on February 14th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

Merrill Lynch has announced a special CD promotion on a 6-month CD paying 5.5% APY. Below are some additional details:

Get a high-rate Merrill Lynch Bank CD
A high-rate Merrill Lynch Bank six-month Certificate of Deposit is a smart, short-term choice for your money. Three-month CDs are also available at 5.25% APY (5.15% interest rate). Minimum investment [...]

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Posted on February 14th, 2007 by Bob Brinker

Did you know that the U.S. Congress changed the start and end of Daylight Savings Time in the United States? Did you know that most of the software on your computer is not prepared for this?  Well, now you do!  Below are links to the Microsoft website to get your computers ready!
Prepare Microsoft Outlook calendar [...]

Comments Off | Filed under: General
Posted on February 14th, 2007 by Bob Brinker