Market Disruptors, GSE Shakeups, and Insights from the MBA Secondary Conference | Optimal Insights | May 27, 2025

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Welcome to Optimal Insights, your weekly source for real-time rate data and expert capital markets commentary brought to you by Optimal Blue. Let's dive in and help you maximize your profitability this week.

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Welcome to Optimal Insights, your weekly source for timely market analysis and expert commentary from Optimal Blue. I'm your host, Jim Glennon, Vice President of Hedging and Trading Client Services 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. Welcome. We're recording this on Friday, May 23rd. It'll come out on Tuesday. Just trying to get ahead of the holiday weekend.

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We just want to continue to keep you informed on what's going on. We've got some breaking news today that we'll talk about here in a little bit with Alex in terms of tariffs and some news in the finance industry. then later on, we want to talk a bit about the MBA secondary conference, which was in New York City this week. Many of you attended that. And even if you didn't, we will help you with some themes that we saw, just a general commentary on how great that conference was.

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So we'll talk about that in a few minutes, but first a little bit of data. OBMMI, you know, we talked about this at the conference. All of us go to bed every night and hope that rates will be lower the next day, but we're not seeing that this week. Haven't seen that in quite a bit at this point. 6.9%. You know, we've got the, you know, between tariffs and the spending bill that's going through the house right now, just, just seeing upward pressure on rates. So we'll talk a little bit more about why that is with Alex.

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Volume's still really resilient though. think despite what you hear in terms of the home buying season is disappointing. Rates are higher than they've been in a bit and they're stubbornly high. Still seeing really good volume come into our pricing engine higher than what we were seeing, know, pre pandemic by 20 or 40%. So again, still seeing good volume there. Some of that is refi. It's not all purchase business, although majority of it is purchase. Continuing to see cash out refis.

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be pretty prevalent and starting to take up again with borrowers just being a little bit overextended potentially on other things like credit cards and car loans and doing a smart thing and consolidating some of that debt into a lower rate that is also tax deductible. Otherwise, let's go talk with Alex about what's going on in the market. Alex, welcome. Hey, good morning. Big week so far. How's it going, man? Yeah, yeah. No, it's been a good week back. Just got back.

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Wednesday. I know you touched back down Wednesday, I believe as well after the NBA. How was it out there? Yeah, that's right. That was great. We're going to talk to Kim and Vimy about it here too in a minute. A lot of good information, a lot of great meetings, really good attendance and a little bit of foreshadowing, think, especially when you look at what Trump posted on Truth Social. just to catch everybody up, as we said, we are recording this on Friday before the holiday weekend, but we'll be posting this on Tuesday.

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Wednesday night, Trump came out and had some pretty, I don't know, almost seemed definitive commentary about the GSEs, just talking about how now seemed like the right time to release the GSEs from conservatorship. And that was on the heels of, at the NBA, Bill Pulte, the chair of the FHFA, was talking about the GSEs as well and potentially foreshadowing a release there.

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So yeah, it was, you know, and there's a couple articles out there about Pulte's comments that came after MBA. And again, you know, what Trump said was pretty much now seems like the time to release the GSEs and then Pulte's comments were basically that for now, the GSEs could be more efficient. It could be more productive and therefore they could make housing even cheaper than what it is.

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Right now, obviously, we're in a bit of a crisis in terms of affordability and he feels like the GSEs could be doing more. But he also said it's up to the president, whether or not we embark on this journey to privatize. Right. And that was really where his post, I think, left it was, he addressed it, which I think this is really the first time Trump himself has addressed the GSEs during the second term. And really, he said, decision forthcoming, but soon, which is really what got everyone excited.

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And then Pulte's comments, think, you know, I mean, he's got, I don't want to he's got the ear of the president, but you know, he has direct lines of communication with him and, his comments at the MBA about, you know, slimming the agencies down and making them more competitive, I would say is kind of in the vein of privatization. You know, there are certain elements of the GSEs that are, there are services being provided by the government to make housing more affordable. Some of those programs aren't the most profitable enterprises as a whole. Obviously the GSEs are highly profitable.

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Um, as, as in our discussions with Kevin Jackson has driven home pretty strongly that, you know, it would be quite a bit of money. They'd be leaving on the table by, by, releasing them back out to the public. But, you know, I think, I think it's kind of a wait and see for the time being, but we'll, just have to see. Yeah, you're right about the, you know, the comments did seem pretty, it got people excited because he said, you know, Trump said that there was a decision that would be made very shortly and an announcement that would be made shortly. that's certainly reignited that discussion.

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And you would think that Pulte speaking publicly shortly before that, he probably wasn't doing that out of school, right? There's likely been internal discussions. One could surmise. So, and yeah, they both implied that, obviously the GSEs are super profitable, but they've implied that if they were actually hyper-focused on profitability like they would need to be, if they're back in the hands of non-government shareholders, they may actually be able to be more productive. And then...

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What we've emphasized and everyone's emphasized is some of the risks around privatization and around that news has been market disruption. I think Pulte was careful to say and to emphasize that if and when privatization does occur, they'd be very focused on a safe and sound process to do that. I think that they're both thinking, everyone in the administration is thinking in terms of not rocking the boat. They definitely have to do it right.

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if they are going to move forward with it. I think this administration of any sense the crisis is the one to do it just from a philosophical standpoint. mean, if you look at how buddy-buddy they are with a lot of libertarian think tanks, lot of libertarian thinkers, those thinkers out in the Silicon Valley tech space, they're very pro free market. so release would fall into that category. Right. All right. So more to come on that maybe by the time this airs.

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We'll see. The other thing that I was kind reading about coming back from the conference related to the administration was the tax bill that's advancing right now. We were all watching rates at the conference and all obviously talking about how we hope every night when we go to bed that rates are going to be lower the next day. Unfortunately, seeing rates drive a bit higher with this tax bill advancing and just the realization once again that we're probably going to break through some spending thresholds and just continue to borrow.

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to continue the general spending habits of our government that's gone on for decades at this point. Yeah, I mean, despite the pitch of the Congress members that wrote it, the bond market doesn't seem to like this bill too much. What really dominated, I think, the mortgage space and bond markets in general up through today, Friday, was really just worries and concerns about what this tax bill will do to the deficit. I mean, I think

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bt limits. I think ever since: 2010

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It seems like we could at least for a brief period before some of this stuff settles down. but as of right now, the bills passed the House very close. I think it was 217 to 216, something like that, passed by a single vote. It's onto the Senate now from the headlines I'm reading. It's getting a little more of an eyebrow raise in the Senate, but we'll have to see. The Republicans do have a majority there and if they can whip the votes into line, they'll be able to put it onto Trump's desk, which they were saying they were hoping to do by the 4th July.

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Right. There's other things in the news just this morning. There was some announcements or rhetoric around Europe now with tariffs. I believe I saw a 50 % tariff that's going to go into effect in a week from now. Yeah, yeah, really playing hardball here. Another early morning true social post from the president. Yeah, he's upset with the EU. They're really not coming to the table in his words and negotiating in fair conscience. So yes, he's said that a flat 50 % tariff on

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The EU would apply beginning June 1st. That is, as of this recording, five business days away. They work over the weekends with those folks in politics. So it's really nine days with the weekends built in. But that's not a lot of time to get a trade deal done. So definitely expect some changes made back and forth in that space. But 50%, I mean, that would leave the tariffs on the EU higher than the ones that are currently on China. And that being said, the EU, as a whole, the EU is actually a larger trading partner with the US than China is.

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So definitely something to be concerned about there, stock markets in both the US and EU sold off on that news this morning. Right. More volatility on, obviously something's gone sideways there in those discussions, right? Or there's not been enough progress to the US administration's liking. So this is kind of a public shot across the bow, if you will. Right. I I think what we were talking about in previous podcasts was that we have this July 7th, think now, early July deadline for the

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the tariff list that was released on April 2nd. He didn't move the goalpost out, which is what a lot of us thought. They just kicked the can if they couldn't get deals done on it. But what appears, he's moved the goalpost forward here and just try and force him into a deal. So we'll see what happens. That'll be quickly developing for sure. Yes. All right. More on that maybe by the time, again, by the time this airs. Not a lot of big news releases this week, right? At least not in data.

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No, it's pretty quiet week. Generally, that third week of the month is always pretty quiet, especially in regards to the data we watch specifically for the bond and mortgage space. Looking towards next week, we got quite a few that I keep an eye on. Kicking the week off on Tuesday, we've got consumer confidence. Just for the health of the general economy, consumer confidence is where everyone's watching, seeing how tariffs are affecting everyone's expectations on if they're expecting to spend money, put a little more in the piggy bank for a rainy day.

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So watch out for that on Tuesday, we get May Fed minutes on Wednesday, just, know, peruse through those, see if there's anything that catches your eye that wasn't already stated with the Fed addresses. And in May, I was watching CNBC this morning and they had goals beyond, he's the Chicago Fed president. He was saying that, you know, kind of what we've been saying on this podcast is, you know, wait and see, you know, the first tariffed goods from China, those only took effect on May 9th. The first ships hit the port for goods that were...

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that fell under the tariff category. So, we need to see how big the effects will be on prices and his fear and kind of what the fear he was saying of the FOMC in general is of the lag in the data. As we've been saying, so goes the Fed. They're on the same page, guess, or rather we're on the same page as the Fed, I guess I should say. Just keep an on the data and keep in mind that there are lags with this data. And then just rounding out the week, we're getting a first revision on GDP. Don't expect anything major there.

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aside from we have seen, think generally speaking on revisions, we've seen pullbacks on the data. We've seen blowout jobs numbers and then they'll say it was 20 to 50K shy of that. So I just want to keep it out there that it's possible that the GDP could fall into that category as well. And then probably the most important release for next week will be on Friday, PCE. That's that inflation metric that the Fed's keeping an eye on. Okay. So inflation for the Fed on Friday, probably the most important.

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data point, but also the consumer confidence I feel like is becoming a bigger issue, Given, know, reminder to everybody, 60 % of our GDP, which is, in the trillions, is consumer spending. And the consumer's not real thrilled about what the economy is looking like right now. And that's a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, or at least it can be. You know, like you said, if the consumer starts to hold onto their wallet quite a bit tighter or is worried about employment.

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We're going to see GDP drop. We're going to potentially see that bleed over into employment and maybe start to compound with some of these other issues that are coming from DOGE and tariffs and all that when we start to get into employment numbers for the main number that comes out in June, which is in two weeks and then start to get into the summer months, which tend to be a little soft anyway. Yeah. There's two consumer numbers out next week. The one I mentioned on Tuesday, the consumer confidence and there's consumer sentiment, slightly different metric on Friday. So big, big week for

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for just gauging the consumers' forward expectations. Yeah. Look out for those, gang, as well as the headlines, obviously. That may be the dominating factor next week, going into especially with some of this Europe stuff that just heated up today and some of the rhetoric with Apple. Yep, absolutely. All right. Anything else, Alex? I don't think so. I think that does it for today's econ update. Beautiful. Thanks so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Alex. All right. Welcome, Timmy, Kim.

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Thanks for being here today. Thanks for having us, Jim. Big conference this week. You know, I would say for us at Optimal Blue, the biggest industry conference that we attend every year, like National is a big one. The one that comes up in October that kind of moves around the country. But this one, we really get geared up for the MBA secondary conference in sunny New York City in Times Square. Kind of a double-edged sword. It's kind of wild and sometimes irritating to be in Times Square, but everything else about the conference is usually great.

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We certainly look to meet with a ton of clients and have good conversations. And some people go into the conference and attend some really good sessions. And of course there's the evening stuff that really wears you out. But it's again, a good time to be face to face with others in the industry, whether it's peers or customers or other influencers. Anyway, I thought it was a great conference. think we were talking earlier on. think all three of us did. I think our whole team got a lot out of it. Really good attendance.

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It seems to get a little better and better every year after the pandemic. In fact, this year, it was probably the biggest turnout I've seen ever in our meeting space. So we got a lot of really good color. And that's what we wanted to talk to everybody about today was just what were some of the themes, what were some of the things that mortgage lenders are talking about in terms of what's been successful for them.

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this year so far? What are their plans for the rest of the year? Kevin was talking to clients in some of our meetings about how are you going to define success this year given that we continue to be in a bit of a flat, boring market in terms of just rates, but there's so much going on. Folks are getting really creative about how they're going to be profitable and how they're going to continuously into next year. Anyway, just wanted to riff on that a little bit and just kick it off with Vimy and Kim. Your thoughts are-

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what you thought maybe were some of the top themes that you noticed in some of these meetings? I mean, why don't we start with what you were hearing from, you you would deal with a lot of MSR clients, but also a lot of pipeline clients and just OB clients in general. And what were some of the big themes you heard? Yeah, for sure. So I would say the thing that stood out the most to me this year was actually a comparison to last year. And that in all of the meetings we attended last year, there was this

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consistent theme and it was, I almost want to call it like a hashtag slogan where everyone sat down and said, survive till 25. Like that's what we're trying to do. And so it was really great to see, A, that most of our clients did survive until 25 and we got the chance to catch up with them and that we didn't see that same sentiment for next year. So I found that to be very positive. Right. So we made it. the comment there?

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We made it. Now folks are looking to get more creative and not just try to keep their head above water and stay profitable. Yep. And there are lots of sub themes to that, right? So one of them, of course, is again, another theme that we've seen over the last few years, but the focus on technology, specifically AI, which I'm sure our followers know that at Optimal Blue, we take very seriously and we've developed a lot of AI functionality. Along those lines, I think it's a little bit more

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challenging for some of the smaller originators out there where they might not be able to keep up with the scale and the speed of development and adopting technology as others. And so to your question, Jim, about what I heard even just from servicers or those that own the MSR asset or just the smaller folks are a little nervous about not being able to compete on the cost of servicing.

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with the addition of technology, certainly that is going to lower costs. And if the smaller guys can't compete on that level and they already have some wariness of competing on other levels, it's just going to be a little bit more challenging. And just interesting. So yeah, kind of a race to the bottom in terms of cost. that's been the promise of AI all along. And we had Sean on last week, talked quite a bit about just general adoption of AI amongst businesses. And it can tend to skew not towards super large companies, but

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You know, the average small to medium independent mortgage bank, I could see how they might not know where to start and maybe not have the economies of scale to utilize AI for something like servicing where it's a pretty nuanced business and it deals directly with people obviously calling in to make payments or to deal with delinquencies or whatever that is. That's an interesting, I hadn't sat in on any of those. That's an interesting commentary and I hope that...

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there's a way to figure that out or there's probably an opportunity for someone to aggregate that sort of, I don't know, expertise or even functionality. And I think there are some out there, some vendors who will help you build modules around like customer service calls and things like that. But that's wild. mean, that's the point. Now that we've 25 or survived into 25, now it's just continuing to get more and more efficient so you can compete with your...

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The other competitors in your MSAs. Yeah, absolutely. I do agree. think going into so many of the meetings that we had this week and gosh, looking back, I think we had over 130 meetings over two days, which is 16 hours. And I think some of that was lunch and ending early. So you think nine meetings an hour on average. And in every meeting I had, think there were folks that were either well underway with testing and implementing the ASCOB asset or originator assistant.

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even the scenario optimizer. again, taking advantage of all of those generative AI tools that we're offering to clients. But there were a handful of those folks too, who really felt like they hadn't had a chance to get into that yet, right? They're still trying to settle things in their current environment with where the market's been and, you know, 7 % rates on average. So it was interesting to see kind of the difference in the size of the client, the amount of originators they had and how far they've come as far as implementing some of this information.

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I think it's really cool to go through. know kind of following the heels of the last podcast with AI won't stick too heavy in that area, but it's such a cool space and seeing how some customers are using it already with just releasing it how they're adopting it to not just gather the information, but put it into a digestible format. So, hey, you ask this question about lock volume and give it to me in a bar graph or in a pie chart, and then just screenshotting that, dropping it into a PowerPoint.

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And seeing how clients are doing that in comparison to others who are again, still looking to automate locks or post-lock changes and just seeing the difference in the types of clients. So, really exciting to see that the adoption for all of the most recent releases that we've had around roles optimizer as well are coming in so hot and heavy post-release. And I'm very excited to see how that plays out over the course of the next several weeks. Yeah, that's a great point. On the origination side of the business at Optimal Blue, we've certainly put a ton of

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AI tools in the hands of our clients just over the last few months, as you mentioned, and we talked with Sean a little bit. It's the Ask OB feature, the originator assistant on the origination side, and then hedging as well. have a ton of good AI assistant features in Compass Edge that we've been tuning every two weeks when we have a release and continuing to train those models, but at this point they're becoming big efficiency gainers.

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for our clients. And I think as people kind of wonder, where should I start with AI, right? Besides a little bit of maybe chat GPT in your own life, you know, write emails and, you know, format proposals and things like that. It's some of these features that are built into some of the products you use every day, like Optimal Blue. you know, if I'm a loan officer, I'm, I hopefully have already learned how to use the Originator Assistant or Ask OB. If not, I'm, you know, after this podcast, I'm asking around about it or, you know, listening to one of our

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release webinars or getting more information from my account rep. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's been interesting to see the change in volume. think I've attended MBA secondary for, gosh, at least the last seven or eight years and seeing the dynamic and the volume that happens or the amount of meetings we've had. And I agree, Jim, I think we had probably the largest amount of meetings this year that we've had in some time, even with where the current market is. It was exciting to see. Definitely. It's been a good recovery. It's good to see New York City bustling.

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Again, I think the last couple of years have been decent, but the year or two after COVID, was still a little bit eerie and slow. Not just in the meetings, but just in New York City, but it really feels like it's a madhouse, at least in the area we were in, which maybe is not the best example, but still it felt like there was good energy, I think around New York, but also around the NBA. I agree. So AI was a big theme for sure.

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It felt like also there was some creativity going on with new products, right? Or at least an appetite for it. Some people you talked to, they'd already started to go down the road and other clients were asking, you know, what's, where should I look for things like non QM for arms, right? Still looking for that magic bullet that's going to make affordability improve even with long-term rates projected to be.

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least for 30-year fixed in kind of the 6 % to 7 % range. Vimy, you were in a lot of those meetings as well and we've all talked since the conference and I think people had a lot of questions about non-QM, whether it was who should I sell it to, how should I hedge it? And then we even had some folks ask, how can I create my own non-QM products and start buying them from other originators because I'm hearing these originators ask those questions, right? So, I mean, were you getting…

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Did you get the feeling there were more questions about non QM in arms or answers or a little bit of both? I would say a little bit of both for sure. Certainly a lot of questions around hedging strategies, definitely a unique product to hedge. And of course we had optimal blue or thinking of ways to advise our clients on how to hedge that. And we're starting to think of unique options like using.

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mortgage rate futures, for example, as we've talked about on the podcast before, we've worked with the CME to develop a mortgage rate future that's based on the OB-MMI. So there could be something similar to that with if you started to look at non-QM rates. And there just are definitely some ideas spinning on how to hedge. And then of course, there were some questions on who can I sell these to? There've always been,

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couple of, I would say, very few players out there. But then we started to hear about a lot of other investors developing an appetite and starting to think about how they might be able to consume this product and sort of support it throughout the industry. Yeah, it feels like the proliferation of non-QM or non-conforming or any of these non-agency kind of products has been just difficult to get off the ground the last few years. it's a chicken and an egg thing a little bit, but it feels like

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I don't know if it's the chicken or the egg, it's starting to grow finally where in order to hedge, like we could have a whole podcast on non-QM and hedging non-agency product, but in order to start hedging it and more efficiently delivering it to multiple investors, there probably needs to be more liquidity, meaning there needs to be more people who buy these loans, But it does feel like there's more interest in it now, especially with some of the discussion around privatization of the GSEs, right? Where there's going to be...

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a different kind of competition that could come out of that if you don't have the government back, at least governing or driving everything that Fannie and Freddie do. So yeah, it feels like an exciting time there. It just has not quite lifted off yet, but yeah, we've had a lot of people come to us and say, know your analytics can handle building price models and then hedging to those. And we're pretty excited to help folks out with that. And there's a lot of money that feels like it wants to pour into backing those kind of loans and those kinds of securities.

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For sure. And another interesting comment that I had heard too, were that clients are starting to consider selling non-QM on a bulk basis, which hasn't traditionally been the case. So we know of a few folks that are doing that. And I just think that to your point, Jim, like the industry is very good about figuring out outlets and creating liquidity, just all in the whole spirit of helping homeownership. Yes. And I think

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You know, just to bring it even to the next theme, which is very much related, a lot of folks were asking and talking about arms, adjustable rate mortgages and no magic bullet there yet either. But it does feel like while projections are for long-term rates, so think 30-year fix to be high for a long time, mean, probably several years into the future unless we have some sort of market event or pandemic, God forbid. But it does seem

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possible or even likely that we will see a steepening of the yield curve. What we mean by that is like today, short-term rates and long-term rates are pretty much even, Stephen, right? That's why we don't really have arms that are prevalent because a six-month interest rate is pretty much within 50 basis points of a 30-year interest rate. But it does feel like whether it's tariffs or just the natural cycle of things or consumer debt, we will have

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a bit of a slowdown in the economy at some point over the next few years. At the very least, the Fed will take their foot off the brakes and lower short-term rates a little bit because we've been in a restrictive stance for such a long time. That would bring arms back potentially, whether it's through the GSEs or some of this private money or both. That does allow for affordability to get a lot better. I think we've all been so focused on 30-year fixed loans for so long and hoping that those rates go down that we've

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We've forgotten that arms, it's not a matter of like an appetite for arms existing. I think that's out there. It's just a matter of like the construct of the market allowing for us to have lower short-term rates. If you can get a five-year arm in the mid-fours, that makes affordability look a lot different. It makes the monthly payment for a borrower look a lot different. And that's really what matters to a vast majority of borrowers. It's not the price of the home as much as it is what am I shelling out every month for?

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for interest, which is, as we know, payments have doubled over the past four years. So anyway, I found it interesting that there was more talk about that, but also a bit of a realization that that's the silver lining of what the projections are for the next few years is that short-term rates are potentially projected to go up quite a bit lower. Yeah. And you bring up a good point too about affordability because I think we are all

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aware that there is a lot of apprehension around what the current administration might do with the existing affordability programs. That has been such a boon for first time home borrowers, for example. And so if those programs do go away, it's nice that there's this sort of organic affordability option out there with arm production. Right. Yeah, that's another good point. The affordability piece, the affordable housing, like the specific programs.

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I think Pulte commented on that in his discussion with the NBA and it was in a couple of articles that were written where he implied, I would say, I believe he said something along the lines of if it's not in the law, then it goes away. So basically, potentially implying that some of these programs that were kind of invented over the past five to 10 years or since conservatorship could potentially go away because they're not directly stated in the laws that created the GSEs.

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Right. Yeah. He was very particular not to give too much away though, too, which is interesting. So as you said, we can infer from it and then we shall see maybe through another tweet what happens. Yeah. No, that's always good form, I think, for anyone in the administration, other than the president. The president could pretty much come out and because he's making the decisions, you know, come out and kind of state what the new facts are going to be. But even in this administration, they're pretty closed-lipped on

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on actual moves until they make them. And the GSEs have kind of done the same over the years, which is prudent and makes things fair for the industry. Absolutely. Kim, anything else that you were seeing as major themes in your meetings with customers or just as you walked through the conference? No, I agree. think NonQM was huge. I also think there was some more uptick in conversation around home equity lines of credit. I think that kind of falls in line with the home affordability, right? Having the opportunity to at

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eager to see how the rest of: 2025

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Just again, with respect to MSR, MSR values are still sky high, really no immediate decline on the horizon, just given that the value is tied so closely to interest rates. And then of course, there was a lot of talk, continued talk about what the rocket acquisition of Mr. Cooper looks like and how that could cause disruption in the industry and allow other servicers to gain share. It could force consolidation in the industry for other large originators. There's lots of potential that

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It's still quite early on after the acquisition, but there's a lot of curiosity about what this means on a longer term basis. Yeah. I mean, that was again, huge news that had come out not too long before the conference. yeah, mean, right now business is usual with our friends at Mr. Cooper and Rocket, but they're going to create the largest mortgage real estate, Redfin.

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thing on earth here over the coming months. It should close this year. So we'll see how all that pans out and what that means for their competitors and what that means for, yeah, it could be a big deal for servicing, the servicing between the largest, even the independents in this country is in the trillions. So that's a major cruise ship that could change direction.

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Yeah, we saw very shortly after that announcement, United Wholesale Mortgage announced that they were bringing servicing in-house. So I imagine we're going to see a little bit more of that as well with certain servicers might be apprehensive about using Mr. Cooper as a subservicer. And then one final comment I have, this is very outside of the traditional mortgage topic of like production and volumes and AI.

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But I would be remiss if I didn't comment on this, but I heard a really interesting piece of Intel related to footwear. Okay, do tell. So there is a company out there that has actually designed a shoe that is targeted specifically for women in mortgage. So not just women, but women in mortgage. And I found this fascinating.

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I did like their slogan. was what? Break barriers and build futures. I was like, well, I guess Optimal Blue could agree with you guys on that. So yeah, for sure. And Kimberly, you can certainly agree that it's a little more challenging for us women who are walking around in the heels. So targeted footwear is a good idea. It takes a few days to recover from New York for sure. Did they look pretty comfortable? they? I mean, would you wear them? Oh, that's a tough question. You don't have to answer that.

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I'm not a brand ambassador, I'm not an influencer, so I'm okay giving you my candid opinion and I do not think I would wear them. I also agree with me. Well, I'm still going to check them out and maybe just in time for Christmas. Maybe I'll find someone who would want to wear them. There you go. I'll send you the link after this. All right. Great note to end on. That's fun. Yeah, again, great conference overall.

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Thanks to everybody that we met with. Thanks to our team for attending and thank you, Vimy and Kim for being here to talk about everything that you learned there and that you talked about with customers and our peers and our competitors. So yeah, thanks again. Good discussion. Thank you, Jim. Thanks, Jim. All right. Thanks everybody. All right. Let's wrap this thing up. Big thank you to Alex, Kim, Vimy. Great discussions today. Great information. Appreciate you. And I hope you all have a safe.

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Memorial Day weekend, please take some time to remember those that died for our freedom. I think it's important that that doesn't get lost in all the stuff that's going on today. And 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. Thank you for tuning in to Optimal Insights.