No secondary market for Loans.

According to Inside Mortgage Finance, an unbelievable 99% of all new mortgages that were securitized in April went through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae. That compares to an "Agency" market share of less than 50% one year ago, proving that there's simply no secondary market for non-agency product at this time. That is an amazing statistic. NO secondary market..

Expect more volatility in interest rates this week. Today we have the LEI (index of Leading Economic Indicators), with the PPI report (wholesale inflation) due out tomorrow. Neither of these reports are expected to have a big impact on rates unless they miss expectations by a wide margin.

The most important news item on the calendar this week will be the FOMC Minutes, released on Wednesday. Traders will comb through these minutes to look for confirmation that The Fed has changed its posture toward interest rate cuts going forward.

Jobless claims up, single family housing down.

Jobless Claims continue high, U.S. Industrial Production (factories, mines, and utilities) was -0.7%, twice as weak as anticipated by economists, and capacity utilization, which measures the proportion of plants in use, fell to 79.7 percent, the lowest since September 2005. Lastly yesterday we had the Philadelphia Fed Index come out at -15.6 in May, better than forecast, from -24.9 in April. ( Readings less than zero signal contraction.)

Today we had Housing Starts increase by 8.2%, but the increase is entirely due to multi-family homes, up by 36%. In contrast, single family starts fell by another 1.7%, albeit from an upward-revised base. This follows the large decline last month, when starts fell by 13.8%, and year-over-year starts are down 30.6% - no surprise given the inventory levels that are out there. Building Permits were up, and single family permits rose by 4.0%, the first rise in a while. After it we have the 10-yr sitting at 3.87%.

SP 500 daily May 15

Coming into a tighter consolidation pattern.