Investopedia released their top 10 searched terms for 2024. Inflation and Tariffs were clearly hot political topics. NVIDIA’s 10-1 split in June was the most popular of the 340-odd companies that announced splits in 2024 (Walmart among them). I won’t be surprised if Homeowners Insurance reprises the list in 2025. I personally opened a High-Yield Savings account in 2024 and fortunately I got talked out of a Moneyline bet on Tyson… American Gaming Association reported that Americans wagered $30.3B on sports in Q3 of 2024. Online gambling is now making up 29% of commercial gambling revenue.
Mortgage Rates increased this week as the price of Mortgage-Backed Securities declined to their worst levels since May. Rates are up approximately 3/4% from this time last year.
Jobs Report – the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that 256,000 jobs were created in January, significantly more than the market’s anticipation of 160,000. This surprised traders and caused Bonds to sell off which is not good for Mortgage Rates. Headline unemployed declined slightly from 4.2% to 4.1%. When you look closely into the numbers you find that over 60% of the new jobs were for folks ages 16-19 and 69% of these new jobs were part time.
Home Values – CoreLogic’s home price Index showed that home prices were essentially flat in November which is consistent with seasonal trends. Values are up 3.4% year over year. CoreLogic is forecasting a 3.8% increase over the next 12 months which is up significantly from their previous forecast of 2.4% CoreLogic trends to the conservative side in their forecasts.