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Fed May Step Up on Mortgages, Bank of America Says (Update1)
By Jody Shenn
June 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department may need to either step up their efforts to drive down mortgage-bonds yields or give up, according to Bank of America Corp.
Investors should buy 4.5 percent and 5 percent Fannie Mae- guaranteed securities because the government is likely to ramp up purchases as interest rates on 30-year loans have climbed to more than 5.5 percent, having an “adverse impact on the housing market,” Ohmsatya Ravi and Ankur Mehta, New York-based strategists at the bank, wrote in a report yesterday.
“Any decline in dollar prices of agency MBS from their current levels would possibly require the Fed and the Treasury to abandon their agency MBS purchase programs altogether, which we think is very unlikely,” they wrote.
Yields on “agency” mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae have jumped as prices tumbled since May 20, driving up borrowing costs and jeopardizing U.S. efforts to stabilize home prices. The market has been roiled by slumping benchmark Treasuries, which have been driven lower in part by mortgage-bond hedging, and widening yield premiums on home-loan bonds relative to 10-year government notes after the spread reached the tightest since 1992.
Today, yields on Washington-based Fannie Mae’s current- coupon 30-year fixed-rate mortgage bonds were unchanged at 4.54 percent as of 10:20 a.m. in New York, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s up from 3.94 percent on May 20, and down from the six-month high of 4.69 percent on May 27.
Federal Purchases
The Fed has bought a net $507.1 billion of mortgage bonds so far, including $25.5 billion in the week ended May 27, according to Bloomberg data. The Treasury, under a separate program started in September when the U.S. seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has disclosed about $64 billion of purchases this year through April, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
In March, the Fed expanded its program, initially announced in November, by $750 billion to as much as $1.25 trillion, and said it would buy as much as $300 billion of Treasuries. The Treasury Department hasn’t detailed its plans.
The risk to the Bank of America strategists’ recommended trade is that the potential pace of changes in the estimated durations of mortgage bonds is at its “maximum” at current yields, meaning “hedging related flows have the potential to cause major dislocations,” they wrote.
Lengthening Durations
As rates increase, the expected average lives of mortgage bonds and loan-servicing contracts extend as estimated refinancing drops, leaving holders with portfolios of longer- than-anticipated durations. Investors then may seek to pare durations by selling longer-dated Treasury securities, mortgage bonds and interest-rate swaps, sending yields even higher.
A further 0.25 percentage-point increase in loan rates will extend the durations of 30-year agency mortgage securities by the equivalent of $149 billion of 10-year Treasuries, the strategists wrote. Contracts in the entire loan-servicing market, where holders are even more apt to “actively hedge,” will extend by about $17 billion to $19 billion, they wrote.
In testimony to lawmakers today, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke didn’t initially address his debt-buying plans, as he said that large U.S. budget deficits threaten financial stability and are contributing to rising borrowing costs.
“In recent weeks, yields on longer-term Treasury securities and fixed-rate mortgages have risen,” Bernanke said. “These increases appear to reflect concerns about large federal deficits but also other causes, including greater optimism about the economic outlook, a reversal of flight-to-quality flows and technical factors related to the hedging of mortgage holdings.”
‘Reasserting Its Independence’
By not reacting to rising home-loan rates so far, “the Fed might be reasserting its independence regarding the setting of monetary policy, by prioritizing the exit strategy over the administration’s refi plan,” Mustafa Chowdhury and Marcus Huie, analysts in New York at Deutsche Bank AG, wrote in a report.
Under the plan that President Barack Obama announced in February, the U.S. loosened Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rules to allow refinancing by an estimated 4 million to 5 million additional borrowers with little or no home equity. If the Fed chooses not to “forsake” the plan by allowing refi opportunities to vanish with low loan rates, the central bank is likely to boost its plan to buy Treasuries, the analysts wrote May 29.
The Fed, facing a “dilemma,” may be reluctant to do boost Treasury purchases amid signs the deepest U.S. recession since World War II is easing, raising the risk that its balance-sheet expansion will fuel inflation, they said.
Private Investors’ Resistance
Fed efforts to drive down mortgage-bond yields by pushing spreads tighter with larger purchases might be hindered by private investors stepping back, as some did last month after the debt went “from being a tremendous bargain to nose-bleed expensive,” said Gary Cloud, a senior portfolio manager who helps oversee $500 million at the AFBA Funds.
While “higher mortgage rates are going to be a headwind” for the housing market, the central bank may also be reluctant to speed or expand Treasury purchases because the market is so large, he added in a telephone interview yesterday.
“If they did that and bonds sold off, it would be really scary because it would basically say the Fed and Treasury have lost control,” said Cloud, who is based in Kansas City, Missouri. “I think they’re smarter than that.”
The average rate on a typical 30-year mortgage climbed to 5.25 percent last week, from 4.81 percent a week earlier, the largest jump since October, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The group’s survey found borrowers paying an average of 1.02 in upfront interest points; the Bank of America strategists’ estimated current rate assumed no points.
-- With assistance from Craig Torres and Brian Faler in Washington. Editors: Chapin Wright, Don Perman
To contact the reporter on this story: Jody Shenn in New York at
jshenn@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: June 3, 2009 11:40 EDT