What are folks talking about here at the Western Secondary? Small things and big things. There’s a brand-spankin’ new private MI company: Anza. (Contact Melissa Gemma with questions.) Lenders are doing interesting things to help communities: for example, here’s Fairway Independent not leaving a dry eye in the house. That UWM has filed a lawsuit in federal court regarding the Two Harbor/CrossCountry deal is no surprise, although $500 million is attention-grabbing. China unleashes $28 trillion (yeah, with a “t”) capital markets to challenge the United States. We’ve heard about profitability, but volume is also important. According to Curinos proprietary application index, July 2026 funded mortgage volume was flat for the year but was -7 percent M-o-M. The average 30-year conforming retail funded rate in July 2026 was 6.42, 8bps higher than June 2026 and 33bps lower than the same month last year. Curinos sources a statistically significant data set directly from lenders to produce these benchmark figures and drills into this data further here. (Today’s podcast can be found here. This week’s ‘casts are sponsored by Optimal Blue. Optimal Blue’s Profitability Center unifies pricing, hedge performance, pipeline activity, profitability, and market intelligence into one personalized dashboard, giving mortgage lenders faster, more complete insights to make better capital markets decisions. Today’s has an interview with Redwerk's Konstantin Klyagin on how AI in mortgage lending must be governed as an entire decision-making system, requiring rigorous testing of data, integrations, permissions, escalation, edge cases, and audit trails.)
Stronger Start on Yet Another Peace Deal Teaser
Bonds are rallying, and we have no objection to that. Reasons are simple and familiar enough that there’s no sense in over-analyzing them. Newswires hit at 7am saying that Pakistan’s defense minister said “things are shaping up in favor of peace” and t…