Stock markets rose to historic highs again this week – In a holiday shortened week stocks continued to climb. More news on the vaccine front indicates that approval to begin widespread vaccinations is just weeks away. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up almost 13% for the month. Should it not see a decline on Monday it will mark the Dow’s best month in over 30 years. On Tuesday it climbed to over 30,000 for the first time. The Dow closed the week at 29,910.37, up 2.2% from 29,293.48 last week. It’s up 4.8% year-to-date. The S&P 500 closed the week at 3,638.35, up 0.8% from 3,557.54 last week. It is up 10.1% year-to-date. The NASDAQ closed the week at 12,205.85, up 3.0% from 11,854.97 last week. It’s up 36% year-to-date.
U.S. Treasury bond yields – The 10-year treasury bond closed the week yielding 0.84% almost unchanged from 0.83% last week. The 30-year treasury bond yield ended the week at 1.57%, up slightly from 1.53% last week. We watch bond yields because mortgage rates often follow treasury bond yields.
Mortgage rates – The November 25, 2020, Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Survey reported mortgage rates for the most popular loan products as follows: The 30-year fixed mortgage rate average was 2.72%, unchanged from 2.72% last week. The 15-year fixed was 2.28%, unchanged from 2.28% last week. The 5-year ARM was 3.18%, up from 2.85% last week.
U.S. Existing-home sales continue to spike in October – The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales in October rose 4.3% month-over-month from September and rose 26.6% year-over-year from the number of homes sold in October 2019. The median price paid for a home increased 15.5% from one year ago. That marked the 104th straight month of year-over-year increases in the median price. The inventory level in the United States was 1.42 million homes, a 2.5-month supply. That’s a record low. There was a 2.7-month supply last month and a 3.9-month supply in October 2019.
