Making America Great Again

3 Michelin Stars or Patience is a virtue or our numbers are better than theirs or making America great again

So it’s a pretty quiet week.  Arguably the most important event just occurred in the form of Feb Durables.  By the way weak.  Ex-Transports much weaker v estimates –1 v –.2%.  We do have the 3rd look at Q4 GDP tomorrow, but with two readings already it’s not a huge deal.  Bonds are closed for the day anyway.  So looking for things to say this week, CNBC is now talking about the unreliability of the GDP numbers.  Before I get into that, let me remind you about the unreliability of the jobs report we always talk about, about 100k jobs plus or minus.  So what did we find out today about GDP?  Well when the final final final numbers come out years later, they find that the original read and secondary and tertiary revisions are 1.3% off.  What’s worse, the revisions are no more reliable than the first reading. IE, 2% might end up being .7% or 3.3%.  Scratching your head? Yeah.  So the two reports that basically dictate the trajectory of monetary policy and therefore interests rates are basically worthless.  Could you do anything in life that you were potentially 100% wrong about, or even get directionally total wrong and still function?  As unreliable as meteorologists famously are, if they forecasted snow and we got 90 and Sunny, the world might end. Yet, we could forecast 1% growth and really end up with .3% contraction. Scary. Might as well have Gordon Ramsay and his 3 Michelin stars cook the books, seems like he’d have more success…

Anyhoo, it’s looking like a record month again.  Congrats!!  We are steaming into Q2 and make no mistake, we may be one of the few. There’s a bunch of antidotal evidence that suggests our competitors are struggling with TRID, profitability and efficiency. MBA applications were down again this week (btw ours are up). Eddy has been talking about how recruiting is picking up significantly.  In a conversation with a vendor recently, David was told that we are only one of two of their 30 clients that are currently experiencing growth.  Wow, pretty impressive and a bit eye opening as well.  I would have figured our success would be top of charts, but maybe not quite so uncommon.  Then again, as a company we’ve exhibited great patience and perhaps even better vision.  We’ve come out of 2008, Sandy, the taper tantrum and most recently TRID stronger than we entered those inflection points.  My math tells me 2 out of 30 is doing better than 94% of our competition.  Just a little better than 100% wrong.  Maybe the Fed should learn from us…  Maybe we are making America great again all by ourselves… 

Markets closed early for the weekend today, yet banks are open. That’s also somewhat of a unique event. #PRIMERS4PREZ #lowerforlonger 

Philip N. Mancuso, Chief Investment Officer

Equity Prime Mortgage NMLS #21116
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Queen Building, Suite 2250, Atlanta GA 30328
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pmancuso@epm.net

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