Episode 82

full
Published on:

5th May 2026

Fed Pause, PCE Rebound & April Market Advantage Preview | Optimal Insights | May 5, 2026

Welcome to this week’s episode of Optimal Insights. In this episode, Jim Glennon and James Cahill deliver the market update, covering global energy risks, inflation data, Federal Reserve policy, and upcoming labor market reports.

Mike Vough and Brennan O’Connell then present a special Market Advantage preview, examining April trends across origination volume, mortgage rates, product mix, secondary market execution, MSR values, and investor activity.

The team shares their expert opinions and insights into how these factors are shaping the industry and the broader economic landscape.

Subscribe to Market Advantage: https://www2.optimalblue.com/market-advantage/

Key Points:

  • Global energy disruption and renewed inflation pressures
  • Federal Reserve policy signals and the upcoming jobs data slate
  • April Market Advantage trends across origination and secondary markets

Chapters:

  • 00:01 – Welcome and episode overview
  • 02:41 – Market update: energy risks and inflation outlook
  • 11:26 – Fed decision and labor market data preview
  • 22:32 – Market Advantage preview: origination and rate trends
  • 27:23 – Secondary market insights, MSR values, and investor activity
  • 32:39 – Closing remarks

Optimal Insights Team:

  • Jim Glennon, SVP, Hedging and Trading Operations
  • James Cahill, MSF/MSR Account Manager
  • Mike Vough, SVP, Corporate Strategy
  • Brennan O’Connell, Director of Data Solutions

Production Team:

  • Executive Producer: Sara Holtz
  • Producer: Matt Gilhooly

Commentary included in the podcast shall not be construed as, nor is Optimal Blue providing, any legal, trading, hedging, or financial advice.

Transcript
Jim Glennon (:

Welcome to Optimal Insights. I'm your host, Jim Glennon, Senior Vice President of Hedging and Trading Operations at Optimal Blue. Our clients and industry partners have long relied on Optimal Blue for trusted insights and commentary. And these podcasts are an evolution of our commitment to keeping the industry informed. Let's dive into today's episode.

Hello and welcome everybody. Welcome, welcome. is May, which is just wild. I know I say that every month, but kind of letting that sink in. We've got a great show for you today.

in the interest of making sure you know what to watch, whether you're an originator, a capital markets person, or just someone interested in the mortgage industry and some great market commentary. Keep listening in. We will start today with a market update, of course. It'll be James and I talking about a little bit of what's going on with the war in Iran, even though that seems to be sort of a weekly cyclical issue that doesn't seem to change very much, although it is continuing to push the

you know, possibly the globe into some sort of recession. So we'll get into a little detail there. And then after that, we will have Mike and Brennan on to give you all a preview of our market advantage report lots of great data insights to talk about there. in a couple of weeks here, we've got the MBA secondary conference in New York city. So let us know if you'd like to meet up with us there. Hope to see everybody out there. Reach out to your relationship manager or reach out to me.

or your, or one of my teammates, if you want to schedule something with us to sit down and meet, if we don't already have something on the books. All right. Before we get into market update, just a little bit of high level data, OB MMI holding in that range between like six and a quarter, 6.3, 6.4, not where we'd love it to be, but we have not seen a ton of upward pressure there. So that's a good sign. Part of the reason is spread between treasuries and

and mortgages has remained relatively low. So the 10 year still continues to creep up a little bit. about close to four and a half today, where we usually see like a two point spread there. So we would be four and a half, six and a half conventional six, you know, the conventional still sticking kind of in that six and a quarter, six point three range. So good, a little bit of good news with some of the bad there. And yeah, let's get a market update going here. We'll meet up with James here in a sec and just talk about what's going on with numbers, but also what's going on globally.

Jim Glennon (:

All right, welcome James. How's it going, man? I hope you had a good weekend.

James Cahill (:

Thank you, Jim. Pretty good. It's always nice to have a background on Monday, isn't it?

Jim Glennon (:

Yeah, why not? Kind of getting right back into the swing of things. I mean, it's got to be better than moving, which is what you've been doing the past couple of weekends. I feel like there's nothing worse, man. Like as far as activities go, can't get fired up for moving. It's exciting, you know, to move into a new place, but just the packing and the unpacking is just, it's dreadful for me.

James Cahill (:

You

Yeah,

I always have a little fun for five minutes with, you know, playing Tetris with the back of moving truck. And then you hit the sixth minute and you're like, yeah, this is actually a nightmare and it's going to go on for hours.

Jim Glennon (:

Yeah

I'm good. ⁓

man. Well, sounds like you're on the downhill side. Almost, almost complete.

James Cahill (:

Yeah, way

more than halfway, so we're cleaning up. ⁓

Jim Glennon (:

That's excellent.

All right. We'll give you a little bit of a reprieve from that and talk a little bit about what's going on in the world before we get to the market advantage segment here. So let's just talk current events first, because I feel like we should always be giving an update on what's going on in the Middle East. Even though it feels like Groundhog Day every Monday morning, you know, we're still not sure who controls the straight of Hormuz. We, know, oil's up again this week.

which is not surprising. There's more escalation. There's more kind of conflicting news between the White House and the Iranians as far as who's in charge, who's signing off on what. So anyway, it's just kind of still chaos on the other side of the planet. There is still this energy crisis that I feel like we in the US are somewhat insulated from.

You and I were just talking about how there's, you know, there's different kinds of fuel, obviously. Like we have a lot of natural gas here, so not a big issue there. We also produce oil here, but we're not totally self-contained. Like there's always this, this graph you can go look at online that'll say we're energy independent, right? But we're not truly energy independent. We are sort of energy, like we are net exporters of energy, put it that way. But we still import a ton of, of

things like jet fuel, you were pointing out, right? We don't refine a ton of jet fuel here, even though we might produce the oil that comes out of the ground that eventually goes into that fuel. Some of that is done on the other side of the planet in the Middle East where you currently cannot get to. So there's this, you would you call it kind of a COVID style, what did they call it? A supply chain disruption has been in the works for the last two months, right?

James Cahill (:

Yeah.

So I would phrase it, maybe this is a way to put it, right? But the United States would like for oil to be flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. If we perfectly controlled the strait and it was absolutely safe, oil would be flowing through. It's not.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

So who controls it? That would tell me not us, right? We might have more and better military hardware there, but it's not insurance companies. The lives of the people in general, the tanker companies themselves do not feel comfortable sending things through. So it's not going through. A large majority of the world's jet fuel is actually refined over in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. So while we might be pulling it out of the ground here, it gets sent over.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

to Saudi Arabia to get refined and then it comes back around. That's why you've been seeing things like flights getting more expensive, know, within that Spirit Airlines.

pulling the plug on themselves saying, we can't do this anymore. So interruptions to the economy. America is resilient. We do have a lot of natural gas. We do have a lot of oil. So heating and electricity might not go up too fast as long as you don't live next to a data center. But that doesn't mean jet fuel is not going up. So transportation costs are not going up. So all of the underlying costs are not going up. And the final tiff to that is, you know, yeah, the United States is insulated, but our largest trading partner in Europe

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

Europe is not. And so if things are bad for them, you if you run the store and the economy is not so good for all of your clientele, it's not so good for you.

Jim Glennon (:

Yeah, I keep hearing more and more about it. Yet we are seeing record numbers in the stock market every week. I cannot reconcile that. I think you're starting to see more journalists come out with opinions or, you know, they're interviewing analysts, obviously, that follow these sort of things more globally. And while, as you said, we're very resilient in the U.S., the consumer is still spending. We have, you know, maybe

the Y-shaped economy or sorry, the K-shaped economy is a good thing in this case because you have the well-to-do continuing to see their 401ks and their portfolios increase in value. So they're continuing to spend on high ticket items that keep consumer spending numbers up. But to your point, Europe and Asia, almost all of our top trade partners in the kind of the first and second world are hurting badly from some of this.

James Cahill (:

You

Jim Glennon (:

disruption and it, me, jet fuel is just the tip of the iceberg. And I think you alluded to that with that's like the first direct costs, like jets need fuel to run Spirit airlines partially went out of business. mean, I don't know that they were very well off to begin with, but, but a sudden spike in jet fuel prices that they did not hedge against meant that the tickets that they've sold for the next six months and the flights that have already taken off in March and April, they were probably underwater on those are close to it. You're going to start seeing that bleed through.

James Cahill (:

Yeah, there's more there.

Jim Glennon (:

to other parts of the economy. It has to. Everything has to get from point A to point B for somebody to buy it. And I feel like we've yet to see the impact of that across all types of other items, just like we did back during the COVID supply disruptions. It's like right now, maybe companies are eating some of that cost, but eventually they're going to have to pass it through in the way of profit margin down to us as consumers.

James Cahill (:

And yeah, exactly as you're saying with COVID, like back during the COVID supply shocks, right? We shut down the entire world, but we didn't shut down essential workers and services, right? And oil was one of those. If you worked on the oil rig, you kept working. And if you were a truck driver, a tanker operator, you kept going. You kept the world economy moving. Right now, that is the gears are stopped or slowed there. So it's not just, hey, you know, it's kind of like

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

COVID, the economy is just in a weird shape. No, the main lubricant is held up.

Jim Glennon (:

Right, so to speak. we've, you know, I think over the past 100 plus years, we have deemed oil to be an essential resource for everything from our military to transportation to people. So during COVID, as you said, that was one of the things that didn't stop moving, yet we still saw inflation close to 10 % during those supply chain disruptions and the extra liquidity and all that. But now we're saying

James Cahill (:

Yeah.

Jim Glennon (:

One of the reasons potentially that we are engaged in a conflict in the Middle East is because we were looking to better secure supply of oil. But in doing that, in trying to reach that objective, we've essentially shut off 20 to 30 % of the oil that flows across the world. And that's not something we can just turn back on on a dime if and when we resolve this conflict.

feels like the stock market's shrugging this one off and maybe shouldn't be. But I've been surprised before just by the sort of anti-gravity nature of the equity markets. We seem to be just looking way past this and thinking that we're going to be better off for it. So anyway, more to come there, but does feel like there's probably some pain, at least globally, in terms of a possible recession. And I think if we were living in Europe or Asia, we'd probably be feeling that already. But it's yet to make its way.

across the ocean.

All right, maybe off of that seemingly dark topic, getting into some more current numbers. So last week, probably Chairman Powell's final FOMC decision, final press conference. You know, the Kevin Warsh confirmation seems to be going through just fine, although there's lots of questions there that we will likely help everybody answer.

James Cahill (:

Yeah.

Jim Glennon (:

over these coming months in terms of some of his testimony, but just getting to the FMC decision, nothing big there, right? We had no cut, no increase. We had a pause and a little bit of, I don't a little bit of questionable language though, I think that led to some disagreement amongst the Fed.

James Cahill (:

The two interesting parts are definitely first, as you alluded to, was Powell's last meeting as ⁓ the chair. it was the hang on there was whether or not he was going to continue at the Fed, see the rest of his tenure out or whether he was going to leave. He's chosen to stay. effectively stated that he felt the pressure the administration had put on him over the past year was a

It was really a phantom, something that they couldn't really work past. And the only way for him to get through that menace was to see the rest of his term through. So he'll be sitting in for a couple more months. No longer the Fed chair as Walsh should have made it through. There are some questions in the confirmation hearings around how he feels about Fed independence, which we'll be talking. will also say during the minutes.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

they, there was some dissents, Mirren dissented as he did want to cut.

there were three other dissents saying, we don't like the language in our announcement, effectively hinting that next time will be a cut. They wanted to strip that out, say, hey, we are very unsure or we're pretty sure we're gonna be staying. pushed future projections to be flat for the rest of the year. And I actually see about a 25 % chance for the CME of a rate hike come December, but that's pretty far out. So those.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

you always take six to seven months out with a grain of salt.

Jim Glennon (:

Yeah, obviously a lot can happen and you know, just based on our conversation a few minutes ago, it does feel a little, I don't know, premature, a little bit maybe unwise to hint that we're going to see rate cuts in the next meeting when it seems likely that we've only seen the first shoots of inflation that are just going to get worse if we don't see it into this, you know, this war in Iran.

James Cahill (:

So with that, last week also, PCE came came out at about 3.5 % year over year, 3.2 % core.

It's important for a couple of reasons PC is of course the feds preferred measure of inflation So this is what they're looking at the target being 2 % We've been saying like oh 2.7 2.8. That's a little high, but you know, maybe it's a new normal 3.5 is is decently high. That's not where you want it. You don't want it three You don't want it above three. So Last time around last month it was 2.8. So it's a point seven percent increase the second reason that this is

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

actually a notable number is because if you look at core, which is energy and food prices stripped out. So we're ignoring the fact that gas has gone up, which most Americans would say is a price they're not ignoring right now. But if you strip that out, that's goods and services that have still increased by % since last month.

So that is a, it's a hit that matters. It's going to show up in people's wallets. And again, it's, it's stripping out oil and gas. So if you look at gas prices nationally right now, it's basically 450 for a gallon of gas. It's 110 barrel dollars per barrel for breads as of time of recording. And the CEO of Exxon was out here saying, I actually think that we could see that get worse. So.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

you know, the idea that, we're going to kind of coast through inflation. It's not that bad right now. This is the first number showing, it is not where we want it. I don't see a rate cut coming with it. And ⁓ it's going to be a minute.

Jim Glennon (:

Yeah, mean, the Fed is still taking, you know, still taking criticism for using the word transitory when we last saw a bout of inflation that some would argue isn't even over yet. And now we're seeing it start to bounce up closer to 4%. Again, it seems, I don't know, it just seems unwise for the Fed to kind of almost ignore that and say, yeah, we're, you know, we're thinking about the next move being cuts because we see more weakness in the jobs market than we see risks.

to inflation. some of that just feels like, you you hear that from CEOs of banks and you hear it from analysts right now that this is going to be short lived and once the war's over, we're going to be back to normal. then you read in other areas that oil, high oil is here to stay for a very long period of time for other reasons, not the least of which is the supply chain disruption right now. So.

I don't know. I'm usually the optimist, but my take on this is it does feel like we're being a little dismissive of some of the risks out there because we feel like everything's cool back here, stateside, while the rest of the world is suffering pretty bad and we kind of need them with a lot of it. We're still a very global economy despite the changes that have been made by the administration.

James Cahill (:

Yeah, and exactly as you're saying, the hope is that this is a one-time shock that, well, now gas costs 450 and it'll just stay there. there's no, you know, there's no cap. There's no deal that that's the case. If this continues, gas could get more expensive and everything else will inflate as well. So it's not.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

If it's a one-time shock, it's almost certainly not done yet. So that implies it's going to keep trending.

Jim Glennon (:

Yes.

Yeah, and you've pointed out fuel prices always go up much faster than they come down. So even if they are destined to come down, you know, it took two months to get where we are here. It could take nine months to get back to where we were. If we ever see that or the gas companies see the margins sustaining themselves. And we just come out of this with just fuel that costs more because there's more risk there going forward. And that's how it's rationalized in the market.

All right, so what else do we have this week? We have jobs.

James Cahill (:

Yeah.

Yeah, so this week we have the other side of the coin, right? It was all kind of inflation news last week, now it's jobs. could hope, hey, well, if there's a little bit inflation, there's a little bit more speed of money, a little bit more hiring perhaps. But so far it's not a...

projected as a phenomenal growth. we'll see Wednesday, we'll see ADP, which is expected to be around 100K ADP of course, is a private payrolls. So it's not as robust as the government says it tends to be a lot more volatile, but it's always just a good number to get you kind of a ⁓ inkling of what's coming.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

James Cahill (:

On Thursday,

we'll have the weekly jobless claims. They're expected to increase to two hundred and five K. That's about where they've been sitting. It's not much of a increased decrease. That's kind of that's what we've been seeing. And on Friday, we'll have the actual U.S. employment report. the speculation on it is it's going to be fifty three K, which is it's a pretty anemic number. It's not.

Jim Glennon (:

Essentially

zero, yeah.

James Cahill (:

Yeah, it's not where we want to see it. number two is the unemployment rate. It's currently at 4.3%. It's projected to stay at 4.3%. I think if we see 53 or lower, that that will creep to 4.4.

Jim Glennon (:

Really interesting numbers and it's increasingly hard to decipher because of the relatively major changes that have happened in the labor market the past couple of years. But yeah, as you said, anemic numbers yet relatively healthy unemployment rate because this economy right now doesn't need to create a ton of jobs to keep everyone employed. Thursday number, so the initial claims number, that

I think last week that number hit a low for the past like 30 years or something, right? Like barely, it to get below 200 K on initial claims is pretty exceptional. And it's a relatively reliable number because it's basically how many people have applied for unemployment benefits, right? So it's not a survey like the BLS report, but it's something that is an indicator.

of the jobs market and seems to indicate really good health in the jobs market versus when it gets up closer to 250, 300,000. And that's when you see you're, you're, feeling layoffs. You're people that are having difficulty finding a new job effort. They've lost theirs. Anyway, that's a fun number to keep an eye on because it is real time. is weekly. And it broke a record, know, broke a record or at least came close to a record last week.

James Cahill (:

But it's definitely, know, jobs wise, this is the week to be watching. That gets us the two halves of the Fed's mandate. So that kind of, you know, wraps all this together with the Fed inflation and jobs. too many other critically this week. The final point I have is the OBMMMI sitting around 6.3 % this morning.

Jim Glennon (:

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that spread is hanging in there pretty low, which is good. At one point we were seeing the LBMMI, you know, closer to 2 % above treasuries, but now we're more like 1.8, 1.85. So the, yeah, the 10 years closing in on four and a half, but we're still seeing like low sixes with 30 year conventional. So that's pretty, pretty healthy. So yeah, we'll see what happens on Friday. Again, you've got the Fed saying they feel like there are.

Weaknesses in the job market that are sort of latent at this point. I guess you can't see them in the numbers and everybody kind of feels that But yet the numbers seem to show health there. So this whole Idea that we could see a cut the rest of the year doesn't seem to be where the money is pointing but it's Where the Fed is placing their language, which to me means they're placing some of their bets in that in that category anyway Time will tell

All right, James, I think that covers everything for this week. We will now check in with Mike and Brennan. We're going to see what's happening with Market Advantage says, as you know, we now once a month, we have the Market Advantage kind of preview, right? The report has not come out yet. It'll come out next week, but we choose some data from that that report, and we discuss it live on the podcast. So.

Let's hand it over to Mike and Brennan and see what observations they have about market data this week.

James Cahill (:

Thank you, Jim.

Jim Glennon (:

All

right, thanks, James.

Mike (:

Welcome to the latest edition of the Market Advantage podcast for Opimo Blue. We're going to be diving into all of the data that Opimo Blue produces for the month of April. been an interesting month just with the gyrations and the rate market. Brandon, why don't you tell us about some of the comings and goings from the data perspective.

Brennan (:

Yeah, interesting is maybe a generous term, so obviously the market was impacted. The origination market impacted by a tougher rate environment to sort of distill it down into the punchline. April lock activity pulled back following a very strong first quarter. Total lock volume was down 9 % month over month, but I some strong signals when you look at the year over year.

So continued improvement over:

at least sort of at the median here. So the purchase lock volume declined just 2 % month over month, but was actually up 9 % year over year. So, please to see that refi activity moderated as you'd expect. So rate term volume down 38 % month over month. Cash out declined 12 % month over month, but both were still up on a year over year basis, 22 % for rate term.

And 11 % for cash outs up year over year. ReFi share slipped to 23%. So under a quarter of total volume. think that is really just a reflection of the, refi market reacting. And then the, the sort of stability that we're seeing in the purchase market here as we move into the spring buying season, on the rate side, higher from the vast majority of the month than we had been in the previous couple of months. we technically finished the month down.

If you just look at sort of where things finished March and at the end of April. So the OBMI 30 year conforming rate, again, the benchmark for the CME futures contract. I finished the month at 6.31%. That was down four bips month over month. But up 25 basis points from where it had been 90 days earlier. And then jumbo rates ended the month at 643 FHA 606 and VA still below 6 % at 5.9.

The 10 year was up, up to 440, basis point climb month over month, but the 10 year to 30 year spread, 30 year mortgage rate narrowed down to 190 basis points. So we did get in terms of TBAs outperforming treasuries in April. Army utilization came down a little bit.

had been 11, 12 % down to just above 10%, but I still think you see folks opting for adjustable rate mortgages here, particularly at the higher loan volume cohort in the market. Product mix shift. The big note here is conforming volumes fell below 50%. So they've been hovering just above 51, 52%, but actually into the 49 here, handle for the first time since we've been tracking it.

think you do just see this continued movement both towards kind of like the non QM non conforming production, as well as towards Gubby products, which might be a little bit more affordable right now for first time home buyers. It is interesting because we talk about how loan limit has just continued to increase. But despite that, you see sort of trend away from the agency eligible.

points above where it was in:

Metrics didn't really change much the DTI's across all loan products were pretty consistent from March to April. So I think you probably just had folks Who were maybe in a position? Where they would have been more impacted by the rise in rates probably just not ⁓ moving and taking out loans in April I think that's it for

the origination side, but probably kick it over to you. know you had some interesting observations on the secondary side. What did you see in April, Mike?

Mike (:

Thanks, Brandon. And one of the things that stuck out this last month was ⁓ the environment kind of in general, seemingly a little bit more positive on the capital market side. So first we saw generally the best effort mandatory spread increase for conventional product of about three to four basis points on average for conventional 30 in the 15 year. GovV30 was down. so how I think about this is that's like the extra incentive that lenders get to hedge.

and manage the interest rate risk until the point of funding, Converso best efforts, that interest rate risk goes to the person you walked that loan with. And maybe with some of the volatility that we're seeing, we might see that spread and widen a little bit, As the larger lenders and aggregators want to be a little bit more defensive, given as you move between different rate environments, your hedge cost is going to...

is going to go up a little bit. it's a positive for folks who are using our software products or our services as that Another interesting trend was, past couple of months, we've seen loans sold to the cash window gain more and more share our loan sales. And this month, we saw it of bounce back to the MBS securitization outlet.

went up almost about three points from going from 41 to 44 % of what we see loans sold on a monthly basis. The kind of leading theory right now is, you could we saw rates rise, servicing values increase. And if you want to actually retain that loan instead of selling that loan to a larger lender or an the economics might have made more sense. And then we mentioned

you home prices going up. mentioned the conforming limit going up. We've seen more more specified pool stories start to build up as well, could also be feeding into the ⁓ shift back to MBS as lenders start to look at these newer specified stories or, or any type of like pooling strategies. The economics could just make more sense now for that. And we saw very stable numbers across where folks are selling their song loans.

We saw just a minor change between people selling into the third and then the fourth or lower cohort, but not really much to change there. The other two pieces that I want to call out MSRs increased in value this month, which makes sense on average. It wasn't up and down month, but on average rates were up over the course of the last 30 days. And with that, we servicing like an interesting mark for us where it was above a five multiple.

it was up five basis points to a 1.29 price. And so that five multiple is a really interesting spot because back before COVID, the common servicing multiple was a four. And then as we saw appetite for servicing rights change throughout the course of COVID, and we've seen folks invest more in recapturing retention strategies, we've seen that value drift even higher. Well, you'll see trades done in the six are a little

above a six multiple, but to see new originations at that five plus multiple is interesting a variety of reasons. I think recapture is a big part of it, that continued importance on owning that borrower relationship. And you've seen it in some of the M &A news in the industry as well. Everyone is valuing that at a very material level. So that's something to be watching. And then this last one, it kind of goes in the same, potentially the same vein here, is we saw our investor

count increased this month. So this stat tracks the average amount of investors who actually bid on a loan sale when our lenders are selling loans. And so, you this is at 14 for the last three months and it just bumped to 15 this last month, which means there's been some additional folks coming into the market maybe just being more aggressive and, you know, bidding on more loans that we're seeing in the system right now, which I think all these signs kind of point to like a bit more of a positive spin.

on the capital market side, where I think the takeaway is when there is some of this volatility, there's also opportunity. It's not always bad when there's volatility. There's more work, potentially more thought exercises you have to do, but in general, there's also opportunity there, which I think is kind of like my larger theme for the last month.

Brennan (:

That's great. Yeah. I feel like that theme carried across both the capital markets and the origination despite a tougher rate environment. And we're hearing it from clients, right? It seems like folks are the rate headwinds and stride and folks have some optimism here and looking forward to seeing everyone here at MBA secondary in just a few weeks.

Mike (:

Yeah, except for MBA secondary, I'm excited to get the pulse on the ground there. It'll be interesting. think even with some of these rate moves, there's been so many head fakes and up and down movements the last four years. I think generally the industry is like prepared for this now, whereas I don't know if I would say the same thing in like 22. I think it's hardened the industry in a positive

you know, these like kind of rate moves that we've seen in some of the other industry trends, consolidation and things like that. But looking forward to seeing everybody at the secondary be back next month.

Brennan (:

Thanks all.

Jim Glennon (:

All right. Great podcast again today as usual. Let's close this thing out. Thanks so much, James. Thank you, Mike and Brennan for the update. That's it for today. Join us next week for another episode of Optimal Insights, where we'll continue to provide you with the latest market analysis and insights to help you stay ahead. Check out our full videos on YouTube. You can also find each episode on all major podcast platforms. Thanks again for tuning into Optimal Insights.

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Designed for mortgage professionals, from originators to investors and everyone in between, each episode offers valuable information to help you maximize results and stay ahead in the ever-evolving mortgage landscape. Tune in for in-depth discussions, actionable ideas, and the latest trends that matter most to your business.

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Optimal Insights Team
• Jim Glennon, Senior Vice President, Hedging & Trading Operations
• Alex Hebner, Hedge Account Manager
• James Cahill, MSF/MSR Account Manager
• Mike Vough, Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy
• Brennan O’Connell, Director of Data Solutions
• Vimi Vasudeva, Managing Director, Hedging & Trading Client Services
• Kevin Foley, Director of Product Management
• Kimberly Melton, Director of PPE Client Support

Executive Producer: Sara Holtz
Producer: Matt Gilhooly

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Optimal Blue, LLC.
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