02-17-2025 "Spinning Wheels" Ride a Fading Rate Trend

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What goes up must come down. Spinnin' wheel Bonds go around.

An axiom is not always a truism. Yet, last week, rates rose and fell symmetrically for good reasons. CPI came in hot, and Crude Oil turned cold.

Long-term inflation drives long-term rates, and Oil remained bearish fundamentally and technically. 2 to 30-year Treasury yields contain bulls and bears, but do not be surprised to see the 10-year fall to 4.20 as Oil falls below $70 a barrel.

Ride a fading rate trend. Let the spinnin' wheel fly.

These views are mine. Know what’s up at TMSpotlight.com.

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Song: Spinning Wheels (1969) Blood, Sweat & Tears

The mortgage industry is evolving, and ICE Mortgage Technology is at the forefront of this transformation. In this episode of Lykken on Lending, host David Lykken sits down with Amy Cross, Director of Development Platform at ICE, to discuss how their latest technological advancements are streamlining processes, improving efficiency, and enhancing the lender experience. From API integrations to workflow automation, Amy shares how ICE’s innovations are helping lenders optimize operations and reduce costs. Tune in to hear how modern technology is reshaping mortgage lending and what it means for the future of the industry.

This segment covers major leadership changes at the CFPB, the agency's policy freeze, and the implications for the mortgage and housing finance industry.

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Adam DeSanctis, VP of Communication at Mortgage Bankers Association

As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely considered to be an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA's social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA's research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA's organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA's Opens Doors Foundation and MBA's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.

The Lykken on Lending program will feature our Weekly Mortgage Updates with Adam DeSanctis and his MBA Mortgage Minute, and then Les Parker’s TMSpotlight, a macroeconomic perspective on the economy with a music parody. That leads to Matt Graham of MBS Live providing you a rate & market update, followed by David Kittle, Chief Executive Officer @ The Mortgage Collaborative, to discuss mortgage originations. Then we have Alice Alvey of Union Home providing a regulatory & legislative update, then Allen Pollack giving us a Tech Report on the latest technology impacting our industry. We also have commentaries provided by our Consultants, Bill Corbet and Marc Helm, Senior Executive Partner @ Transformational Mortgage Solutions, talking about Loan Servicing and the “Agencies”.

This episode explores the evolving government workforce, the impact of job cuts on housing policy, and the latest market trends shaping the mortgage industry.

This episode unpacks the CFPB’s $700 million budget debate, HUD’s push for efficiency, and the broader impact of government oversight on housing policy and lending programs.

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Alice Alvey, Master CMB

Vice President Partner Education and Training at Union Home Mortgage

She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.

Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.

She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.

Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!

This podcast segment explores the impact of Super Bowl 2025 advertisements, highlighting the integration of artificial intelligence by major tech companies and the influential role of social media in shaping consumer engagement.

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Allen Pollack, a Mortgage & Financial Services Technology Advisor, is a subject matter expert in the mortgage origination process along with software product management and software development.

In today’s financial services push to all things Digital, Allen has been helping lenders and financial services solution providers align their digital transformation and technology strategies by removing the human element of risk, and automating processes that drive efficiencies and margins into profits.

Over the course of his career, Allen has co-created and developed technology business models that have birthed highly successful, innovative solutions and companies.

Allen co-founded and served as CTO of New York Loan Exchange (NYLX), a loan product eligibility and pricing engine (PPE) that made an immediate impact on the industry, scaling the company quickly and forming partnerships with multiple mortgage and financial lending companies. In 2012, Allen was a co-founder of a merger between NYLX and Aklero Risk Analytics that created LoanLogics, A Mortgage Loan Quality and Performance Analytics company. Allen served as CTO where he continued to bring new and innovative product solutions to the market that made a significant impact to mortgage lenders that reduced risk, scaled business channels, and grew profits in a very competitive and highly regulated market.

Allen is also is mortgage and finance technology contributor on a weekly live industry podcast, Lykken on Lending, and is launching a new podcast soon to be released, TechStack Radio, dedicated to technology and innovation in Financial Services.

This week's MBS Live Market Update explores how a surprising AI breakthrough, shifting tariff policies, and market volatility influenced bond yields and interest rates.

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Matt began as an originator in 2002. He fell in love with the idea of following MBS in real-time but felt that existing products were only scratching the surface. Thus was born MBS Live in 2007, the first-of-its-kind platform with real-time market data/analysis, and live chat with analysts, traders, and originators around the country. He is currently the Founder and CEO of MBSLive!

He's been covering bond/mortgage markets, writing commentary, alerts, and chatting with the live community every business hour of every business day ever since.

Matt also serves as the Chief of Operations for mortgagenewsdaily.com, where he is one of the industry's most respected mortgage rate experts, frequently quoted in the media. Mortgage News Daily's rate index is used as the definitive resource on day-to-day mortgage rate averages.

He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and son where he enjoys skiing, fishing, coaching youth sports, playing the guitar, and more DIY projects/hobbies than he'd care to admit.