[David] Matt Graham. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Yeah, very much. A lot of noise and it’s let’s get into this discussion about this. Let’s start off with you, bill. Have you had a chance to talk to Les and and get some idea of where he’s heading Les and
[Bill] I’ve not spoken in the last couple of days, so I don’t, now I’m listening to both Les and Matt. My take right now is bearish. I think rates, if they move anywhere, are going to move higher. And I actually think the interesting move is going to be when the 10 year goes through four 50, what the market action is like with going back the other way. Yeah. I said three, four weeks ago, is there a shot of the tenure, in a blowout. Hitting close to 5%. Yeah. And I think now things are getting wound so tight that something bad happening in the Persian Gulf could lead that way. To Matt’s point on the spending side, it’s all about they need to spend more money and there’s not a single conversation about we need to offset it somewhere else. So between guns and bullets in the deficit. I’m not seeing a compelling argument for rates to come down in the near future.
[David] No. I don’t see it in the near future. But one of the things when I was at the housing wires, gathering this last week in Austin. I was surprised the amount of optimism that was there. And it seems like the war, everyone’s perspective on the war Bill is that this is going to wrap up at some time sooner than later. Everyone that I talked to had probably one of the best closing months or anticipating it. Part of ’em were before talking to ’em at the very last days of the month. They’re anticipating the best closing month and did have the best closing month of any month they’ve had in years. And their pipelines are still strong, albeit applications are off because of the latest war and volatility, interest rate volatility. But again, the optimism is not faded away, which I take as a good sign. Not that it’s maybe it’s fool’s gold, how would you read that? When you see listing to the optimism that’s there, is it fool heartedly, fool hearted?
[Bill] Or is it pretty quickly and Yeah, we had, I think the faster things get resolved in the Middle East, obviously the better and faster is within 30 days. It’s not a week or two scenario at this point. Yeah. The big question now is around running out of oil storage and what are the ramifications for that?
[David] That’s. the real de factor here where they have to shut down, start capping oil wells, it’s gonna have a permanent impact on them. That’s what I think trump’s all the commentary. Yeah. I’m hearing that’s what Trump’s banking on, is that this is gonna get too expensive for them and they’ll be out. So whatever the, cause I’d love to get some of the other thoughts. Mr. Kittle, what’s your thoughts?
[Kittle] I agree with everything that’s been said so far in a couple of the reports. We’re at a 4 44 10 year. Rates are up a little bit. Everything I’m hearing, pipelines are full, originations are still considered strong. It’s backed up by great job numbers growth. Yeah. But it still comes down to Iran and that does have to get resolved because that’s gonna figure in an inflationary number. War. As fed chair and I kinda wanna bring this up and see if anybody has any comments on it. Powell over the weekend said he is not going anywhere and he’s gonna stay on the board, which is not what has happened in several recent Yeah. Not they acquiesce and go away nicely. And he’s not gonna do that. I don’t think that’s gonna affect anything war is gonna do. And he’ll look at his first set of inflation numbers, which will have higher oil prices put into it. We’ll see if he’s gonna lower rates. Rates his first fed meeting. Yeah. Which is an indirect by the way, of mortgage rates, as we all know.
[David] Yeah, exactly right. Mark your thoughts on the markets on interest rates.
[Marc] My thought is real simple. So goes a war, so goes our economy for the short term. I really truly believe that, trump’s wavering right now on this, he, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, and then not doing it, and then extending the cease fire and all that. I know he is getting under a lot of pressure or not, and we’ve got that thing about the time limits on the war and all that of what he can and can’t do in Congress and all. I think it’s sending a lot of mixed signals around the world. I’ve just figured out a long time ago in this, you need to act. If you need to act, act, the more you delay. It’s never good, it just, yeah, we can all cite hundreds of examples of that, but they need to know we mean business and as soon as we let ’em know, we in business, that’s when we’ll bring them to the place we need to have ’em. But until we do that, I think we’re just wasting our time over there and putting everybody at risk before they decide to sink a ship in the straight, yep. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to do that.
[David] They’ll try. There’s been no doubt about that. With a small boat. The mosquito fleet. Yes. Miss Kittle.
[Kittle] David, no. Decision is a decision. An indecision is deciding to do nothing and he does need to move forward with it. And I’ll say it, like I said last Monday, the one thing President Trump doesn’t wanna do is to have any more Americans or anymore people killed. I think that’s what he’s holding off for, squeezing them until it collapses. How much longer that’ll take? Yeah, no one knows. However, we always need to remember. He’s fighting, he’s not fighting a military, he’s fighting an ideology. And that doesn’t break very easy. And those people that are in charge, they don’t care about the people over there. They’ve already killed 40,000 of their own people, so he needs to move.
[David] Yeah. Yeah. And then the New York Times isn’t helping with their reporting on this thing. If you read the New York Times, it sounds rah, Rons were winning. But anyway, anything, Alan, you wanna contribute to this?
[Allen] No I don’t have a professional opinion in the area. All I can say is there’s always something going on and people wanting to get into new homes refinanced because of major life changes global economics and all of that should just stay as global economics. And our job is to help people do what they need. And we’re doing it and the sentiment is high, and rates are always gonna move around. There’s unique ways to get around it, and you can educate your customers to let them know they can refinance later, or maybe they qualify for a VA loan with less money down, or they have equity they didn’t realize in their current house. There’s so many scenarios. So that’s what we have to focus on.
[David] Yep, I agree with you. Focus in on housing because people are buying homes. Mr. Corbit just bought a house. Others are buying houses, and we’re seeing the activity continue to improve. So stay focused listeners on the market at hand. We’ve got some good times ahead of us. Really do believe this is not gonna last forever. And call me an optimist, but I believe this is gonna go well. Alice is not here for with us today, so we’re gonna just get a little more feedback in on pipelines, which you’re hearing David from within the membership at TMC. I know I just talked. He does the folks over at lenders One. And again, a lot of optimism in that organization as well as what I said already earlier, what I heard at the housing wire the gathering, a lot of optimism overall exciting. About the outcome. Yet we see the headline in the The National Mortgage News, Brian Hale, who I got to see there, some I respect tremendously said 2026 will be a very tough year. And he’s citing warns of over capacity, interest rates, viability. And he said another one that’s put in there, Alan, that’s really interesting is AI driven disruption, forcing consolidation across the lending industry. So a lot of perspective of, it being a good year for originations. Maybe that’s such a good year for the mortgage industry. When it comes to that margin. So again, are we gonna see profitability slip, Mr. Kittle?
[Kittle] To your first question the people that are registering for our next conference at September at TMC registration are up. They’re going strong. There’s great. You still have the caveat of their, and to Alan’s point a couple of minutes ago, you still have to go out and do loans to take care of your customer every day, even though that’s a focus stuff to focus on the running of your business. I’m hearing, and I think it’s reported out there as well, you and I talked about this repurchases from the GSEs, Fannie and Freddie are out. And it’s something people need to be cognizant of and aware of as volumes increase. Yeah. So will your repurchase requests,
[David] Yep. And there’s a lot of lawsuits going on those. One of the big headlines in there is a major lawsuit that with a lender on a repurchase demand. So we’ll be seeing, that’s all heading. Any Freddie will be some pushback on some of these repurchase demands. And but getting back to the markets, per se, just overall optimism. Seems to be pervasive and any, everyone I’m talking to across the board happy to get the war over and they believe it will be over here and it’s in months. Not this, not gonna get into a prolonged, no one’s buying into the dialogue that this is gonna be a prolonged war. Hoping we’re weeks prepared for months, but preparing for a really good economy after that on the other side of this. All right. Thank you so much for the comments on that.