Correspondent Blog

This week will provide a potpourri of Fed speak, retail spending and inflation numbers, along with industrial  production and consumer sentiment. Top billing this week goes to Fed Chair Jerome Powell who travels to Capitol Hill for his semi-annual Congressional testimony. He’ll begin tomorrow in front of the House Financial Services Committee and on Wednesday…

The January jobs report beat expectations but not strong enough to move the Fed off the pause button (think Goldilocks).   Job gains totaled 225,000 in January versus 165,000 expected and 147,000 the prior month. The pop in job growth was a nice surprise after two straight months with gains well below 200,000 and below the…

Beginning in May 2012 we started tracking  portfolio trends of our bond accounting customers here at the Correspondent Division of CenterState Bank.  At present, we account for over 141 client portfolios with a combined book value of $10.03 billion, or $71 million on average per portfolio.  Twelve months earlier the average portfolio size was also…

The last two days have proven one thing and that is the political season is fully upon us, and the ebb and flow of the race will  have a direct impact on trading direction and momentum. The juxtaposition between the chaos of the Democratic Party’s Iowa coming out party and President Trump’s State of the…

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) have been lending to borrowers for many decades.  The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) have popular multifamily lending programs so much so that they now control the bulk of the market. For example, Freddie Mac’s total multifamily finance activity for 2018 was $77.5B, and…

Since you probably spent time today discussing the Super Bowl ads (Smaht Pahk, Google, and Snickers were our favorites), we wanted to highlight an all-too-common bank marketing mistake that many make. It can be argued that despite its high price, Super Bowl advertising is one of the best deals in marketing as you are assured…

This week is full of first-tier economic releases but coronavirus headlines will continue to drive market trading more than anything else. Businesses started reacting last week to the spread of the virus and it stands to reason continued moves and developments lay in store this week as well. An economic impact to China is obvious…

In a surprise to no one, the Fed left the fed funds rate unchanged today but did tweak the Interest on Excess Reserves higher by 5bps from 1.55% to 1.60%. The tweak was forced on the Fed as the effective fed funds rate was trading at 1.55%, uncomfortably close to the lower bound of the…

While the eulogy for checks has already been written and cash is starting its demise, the pallbearers are now in place. By our estimation, 14% of banks offer this service and they are starting to reap material rewards. Bank of America, which has offered the product since 2014 is one of the largest beneficiaries and…

The FOMC rate decision comes later today (2pm ET), and while you can never call a Fed meeting inconsequential, this one is about as close as you can get. No rate change is expected and there will be no update to their rate and economic forecasts so the only information provided will be the post-meeting…

Because of tradition, we tier our deposit accounts according to size. For a typical bank, their money market accounts often have six tiers ranging from $2,000 up to $100,000. The question that always comes up is – do you have the right tiers and the right number of tiers? Are you using your tiers to…

This Wednesday’s FOMC rate decision is not expected to carry much drama. No rate change is expected and the meeting won’t provide an updated rate or economic forecast. What we will get is the post-meeting statement and press conference from Chair Jay Powell. The market consensus is that the Fed will continue to characterize the…