Monday Minutia

Happy Monday morning to all!  It sure seems appropriate that we all turned our clocks forward at 2:00 am Sunday morning and what followed was a fantastic spring day! I don’t know about any of your neighborhoods, but around 5:00 pm yesterday you could smell the barbeque’s cooking up a storm.

In morning news, mortgage backed securities are up, rate pressure is down, and the New Century meltdown continues.  The NYSE suspended trading of the stock due to the fact that in after hours trading it was off 56% from Friday’s close of $3.21.  Another lender, Option One, came out with an announcement today that they will no longer offer programs in excess of 90% LTV (Loan to Value).

With the state of the market as it is today, it is very important as a consumer that you check and make sure that you are working with a reputable and solvent lender.  If you are working with the direct lender and they are publicly traded, ask them for their stock symbol and perform some research.  use Google finance or Yahoo finance to check on the viability of the company you are entrusting to your financing needs.  If you are working with a mortgage broker it gets a little stickier.  Ask them how many funding sources they have, who some of their top providers are, and who they foresee as being the funding lender on your particular transaction.  Then research those sources much the same as if you are working with a direct lender.  If the broker hesitates or will not give you the information you are asking for then take that as a red flag and consider reconsidering who you are working with.

The economic report arena is quiet this morning but we have some market movers coming out later this week.  Retail sales tomorrow, PPI (Producer Price Index) on Thursday, and CPI (Consumer Price Index) on Friday.