All 4 mortgage app. indices are posting their strongest numbers for this time of year since 2022. Purchase applications are up 10.8% annually, refinance up 25.1%, rate-and-term up 50.9%, and cash-out up 15.6%.
Fed's hawkishness pushed 10-2Y spreads down
https://t.co/ly8apkThi8
On crypto - Moreno told me this evening that "The president has agreed to the most aggressive ethics language in the history of the United States."
"It’s up to Democrats whether they want to accept yes for an answer," he added.
D's and R's plan to meet on bill tomorrow.
Trump Clears Path For CLARITY Act Vote With Ethics Deal
US President Donald Trump has agreed to an ethics provision that could unlock passage of major crypto legislation.
An industry source told The Block the agreement came Monday evening after months of stalled talks.
The provision addresses how officials can profit from digital assets while in office. Democrats reportedly have not yet seen the finalized text. Bill language is expected within days.
The bill would give the SEC and CFTC joint oversight of digital assets.
Lawmakers have until early August to bring it to a vote. If passed, it heads back to the House before reaching Trump's desk.
This AI just exposed the BIGGEST legal insider trading operation in America.
A platform called GovGreed built a seven-layer machine learning system that cross-references every stock trade disclosed by every sitting politician against the bills their committees control, the campaign donations they receive, and the companies their votes directly impact.
It scored all 540 politicians currently in Congress. And the numbers are crazy:
56% of every stock purchase made by Congress in the last 16 months was on a stock directly affected by a bill the buyer later voted on. That is 6,170 out of 11,016 total purchases.
More than HALF of all congressional stock buys are on companies whose fate that same politician is about to decide.
343 of 540 Congress members actively trade stocks while holding access to nonpublic legislative information.
That is 63.8% of the entire legislature making market bets with an informational edge that would put any hedge fund manager in prison.
The AI identified 752 active "Triple Signals" in the current Congress. A Triple Signal fires when three conditions line up at once:
The politician sits on the committee controlling a bill, they traded stock in a company affected by that bill, AND they received campaign contributions from that same industry.
Bills carrying these insider indicators pass at 5.4 TIMES the normal rate.
Now look at the individual leaderboard:
- Nancy Pelosi's estimated portfolio sits at $194 million with a Greediness score of 98.1 out of 100
- Ro Khanna made 13,231 trades across 800+ different tickers
- Michael McCaul made 32,302 trades and filed 6,670 of them late
- Thomas Suozzi filed 86.4% of his trades late with an average delay of 396 days, meaning his disclosures landed over a YEAR after he made the trade
And then there is Lisa McClain, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House. She has made 1,443 trades in three years, more than 98% of all politicians tracked.
She violated the STOCK Act twice in a single year, disclosing up to $900,000 in trades months after the legal deadline. Her husband bought up to $250,000 in Elon Musk's xAI, which quietly converted into SpaceX equity before last Friday's $2 trillion IPO.
The penalty for all of this? A $200 fine.
The number of Congress members ever prosecuted under the STOCK Act since it passed in 2012? Zero.
And the cruelest part is this:
A bill to ban congressional stock trading was introduced in January 2026. It has bipartisan support. Over 80% of American voters want it passed.
But Congress is sitting on it, because the people who would have to vote yes are the same people making millions from the system staying exactly the way it is.
They write the insider trading laws, they exempt themselves from enforcement, they trade on the information those laws generate, and when they get caught, they pay a fine that is basically nothing.
The AI didn't discover anything Congress was hiding. It just organized what was already public into a pattern so obvious that nobody can pretend it isn't there anymore.
📈 Markets Rally as Peace Prospects Brighten
Progress toward a peace deal has sent stock prices higher, oil prices lower, and yields falling. Easing energy costs could translate into meaningful relief on inflation and mortgage rates in the months ahead.
https://t.co/bCUsyi22Af
The AI revolution isn’t just transforming technology it's creating powerful new housing demand. Data center construction has surpassed $50 billion annually, with a 70-85% probability of boosting or stabilizing home prices in nearby communities.
https://t.co/z4DXtBHbl0
Temporary pandemic stimulus initially fueled record stock wealth, which ignited sticky inflation, compressed real disposable incomes, & drained consumer savings down to 2.6%. This exact sequence explains the current product market share to finance a home.
https://t.co/XwLyuSLYIi
Mortgage rates are in the 6.4-6.8% range, inventory is quietly climbing back up, homes are sitting on the market a little longer than they were a year ago. Translation? Buyers have more breathing room, sellers need to come in with realistic expectations.
https://t.co/twixDx1MHG
📈This “higher for longer” regime fits the current resilient growth + sticky inflation readings we have recently observed in all four leading inflation indicators (CPI, PCE, PPI, and ECI), meaning no rapid decline in rates should be anticipated.
https://t.co/WnaNjYx7Cu
🤨The wild card for where mortgage rates go from here, by way of the foreign exchange and bond markets, could have much to do with what Japan does next and not what the Fed does next
🏡2025 HMDA Data in Review as well
https://t.co/p3aA7pA4Tg
Today, Mastercard, @OndoFinance, Kinexys by @JPMorgan, and @Ripple successfully completed a landmark transaction connecting a public blockchain with interbank settlement rails.
Together, we’re laying the groundwork for 24/7 global markets that never close.