{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Annex Wealth Management SWOT Podcast","title":"Monday, October 5th. Have You Seen Mortgage Rates?","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/cfd0ef5a\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":633,"description":"Annex Wealth Management SWOT podcast for Monday, October 6, with chief economic strategist Brian Jacobson on fourth-quarter strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.\nStrengths: a soft payroll print that the Fed is treating as fine. Nonfarm payrolls rose only 29,000, which would have looked weak in past cycles, but it drew little reaction. The Fed is between meetings and has already said the cumulative improvement in the labor market is enough; its focus is inflation. The old rule of thumb that the economy needed roughly 100,000–125,000 jobs a month to hold unemployment steady is outdated. With slower immigration and an aging workforce, the breakeven pace is closer to zero. Unemployment edged from 4.1% to 4.2% and is still bouncing in a narrow range—nothing the committee treated as a break in the story.\nWeaknesses: higher mortgage rates and stuck housing. Yields have moved up for reasons other than inflation fears. Five- to thirty-year breakeven inflation rates have been fairly stable. The drivers Jacobson cites are heavy issuance (a federal deficit around 6% of GDP, plus corporate bonds to fund data centers), markets repricing a Federal Reserve that is signaling further hikes, and decent growth that itself pulls rates up. Borrowers—homebuyers, car loans, credit cards—are competing with that supply of debt, so housing affordability is worse. People who took higher rates a few years ago expecting to refinance are still waiting. The 3% “golden handcuffs” still lock many owners in place, but job changes, another child, divorce, downsizing, or health issues are forcing some moves anyway, and fewer households still have those 3% loans.\nOpportunities: yields that make fixed income useful again. The same higher rates that hurt borrowers pay savers. Jacobson frames it as a transfer from net debtors to investors. For many clients, current yields are high enough to raise the fixed-income allocation. Yields can still rise, but holding an individual bond to maturity...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/6ixcfGX4bS9QZl2c-rwsyQt5VhizlfpKdR4FrP_DUaw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzMxNDczLzE2NTU4/MzUxODAtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}