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Strategies & Market Trends : Heinz Blasnik- Views You Can Use -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AllansAlias who wrote (42)	4/16/2003 11:43:30 AM
From: pater tenebrarum	1 Recommendation Respond to of 4905

Hi Allan, yes, credit growth is still going great guns....check Noland's latest for some recent data. "‘The past two and a half years have been unprecedented and have created massive volume,’ said Bear Stearns’ Marano. ‘I’d much rather be an investor in mortgages than telecoms or even financial service companies.’” First-quarter CMO issuance of $302 billion was up 57% from the year earlier first quarter." of course there was a time when those very same guys fell over each other to grab a piece of the telco borrowing binge... further: "March numbers from Countrywide Financial are worth reading twice and contemplating: “Loan fundings for March reached $38 billion, up 23 percent over February 2003 and up 149 percent over the prior year…First quarter 2003 fundings mark a new company milestone at $102.4 billion; The March mortgage loan pipeline closed at $59 billion, up 20 percent over February 2003 and up 176 percent over last year, indicative of continued growth in fundings for the near-term; Average daily applications in March reached $2.7 billion, up 23 percent over February 2003, and up 216 percent over last year, fueled by persistent low mortgage rates; Purchase fundings reached an all-time high of $9.5 billion, an increase of 62 percent over last year.” Notably, March Purchasing fundings were up 44% from February and 22% from January. Year-over-year, Non-Purchase (refis) fundings were up 203%, Home Equity up 53% and Subprime up 94%. And there are indications that mortgage finance is off to a strong start in April. Blow-off Week 42 saw the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Purchase application index jump almost 10% to the fourth-highest ever. Purchase applications were at the strongest level since early September and were up 20% y-o-y. Also noteworthy, last week’s Purchase applications were up 22% from February’s average and 11% above March’s. And while the Refi application index declined 5% last week, it remains four times the year earlier level. " prudentbear.com