U.S. Mortgage Applications just fell back to the lowest level since 1995.
And are now down 50% from the pandemic peak.
Demand to buy with a mortgage today is shockingly at the same level as 31 years ago, even though U.S. population is 30% higher.
The reason demand is so low is due to sky-high home prices, which are in a massive bubble.
To go along with sky-high prices, mortgage rates are now back to normal at 7%.
Meaning the vast majority of buyers can't afford it, with the typical household needing to spend nearly 40% of their gross income on house payments.
This historic demand collapse will not improve until home prices drop meaningfully.
And the situation is becoming especially dire in America's highest cost markets.
Check your ZIP on Reventure to see where your market ranks: https://t.co/f4qNQ29CIP
WOW... Anthropic has a surprisingly dense web of connections to the world’s largest funder of "catastrophic-risk" work (aka AI doom):
> Open Philanthropy → built by Karnofsky + Moskowitz’s Good Ventures
> Good Ventures → funded Jacob Coxon’s scholarship
> Karnofsky → married to Daniela Amodei, Dario's sister and Anthropic's president
> Moskowitz → early investor in Anthropic
> Dario → scientific advisor to Open Phil years before Anthropic
> Karnofsky now works at Anthropic on AI safety strategy
> Open Phil-funded MATS → Evan Hubinger → now Anthropic alignment-science lead
> Hubinger backed Coxon: "We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!"
> Ethan Perez → Open Phil fellow + ~$1M Open Phil research grant → Anthropic Head of Alignment
> also backed Coxon: "100% agree with [Coxon] that AI poses serious risks to society, and I'm glad he's speaking out!"
is this kind of a dense network normal for a company?
Stanley Druckenmiller renders an unfavorable opinion of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's use of buybacks to defend against higher yields in a market that is functioning normally.
"I have spent five decades trading on a simple premise: Markets aggregate information no committee possesses, and prices are how that information reaches decision makers. The long-term Treasury yield is the most important price in the world. It is also the only fiscal disciplinarian the U.S. has left."
"Every basis point of artificial yield suppression is a subsidy to procrastination."
"Return buybacks to their stated purpose: small, scheduled, off-the-run liquidity operations announced at quarterly refundings, never off-cycle responses to yield levels. Term out the debt honestly and pay the price the market sets."
"If the 30-year must trade at 5.5% to clear, that isn’t a crisis. It is an invoice. Then do the only thing that durably lowers long-term yields: address the primary deficit."
https://t.co/Xe8Vi38WiI
So the current state of Shipping choke points:
Hormuz: War Zone
Red Sea: Houthi Blockade back on
Black Sea: War Zone and dozens of vessels attacked last few days
Panama Canal: Drought restrictions beginning and will get worse with El Niño.
Shipping disruptions are in the max phase.
What a wild time we live in …
#SHIPPING
AI trade shifting from “spend whatever” to “show me the returns.” Kimi K3 and $GOOGL Gemini delay show leadership is ephemeral. Massive capex bets on prices staying strong.