In this week’s episode of Optimal Insights, host Jim Glennon is joined by Alex Hebner and James Cahill to unpack the start of 2026. They cover cooler‑than‑expected CPI (2.6%), nuances in PPI, the narrowing mortgage–Treasury spread as OBMMI briefly touches the “5‑handle,” and what to watch this week (GDP, potential Supreme Court rulings with implications for Fed leadership).

The team also recaps policy ideas circulating in D.C.:

1. instructing GSEs to purchase ~$200B in MBS
2. a proposed one‑year 10% cap on credit‑card APRs
3. allowing 401(k) funds for down payments
4. plus market structure ideas like refi lock‑in/prepay penalties to lower rates.

They close with a fast geopolitical tour (Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Greenland) and how elevated global uncertainty, defense outlays, and AI capex keep a floor under rates despite occasional dips.

Optimal Insights Team:

1. Jim Glennon, Senior Vice President of Hedging and Trading Operations
2. Alex Hebner, Hedge Account Manager
3. James Cahill, MSF/MSR Account Manager

Production Team:

1. Executive Producer: Sara Holtz
2. Producer: Matt Gilhooly

Commentary included in the podcast shall not be construed as, nor is Optimal Blue providing, any legal, trading, hedging, or financial advice.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to Optimal Insights. I'm your host, Jim Glennon, Senior Vice President of Hedging and Trading Operations at Optimal Blue. Our clients and industry partners have long relied on Optimal Blue for trusted insights and commentary. And these podcasts are an evolution of our commitment to keeping the industry informed. Let's dive into today's episode. Welcome everybody. Today's Friday. We're recording on Friday, the 16th of January. Monday is the MLK holiday. We have a great show today.

So we'll get into that here in just one sec. First, a little bit of data. The OB MMI is right around six. So I'll call it six ish. We did hit the five handle briefly on some of the news last week, which we'll talk about here again, just about the GSE is being instructed to buy some MBS off the market. The 10 year is still around 4.2. So mainly we're seeing a drop down in mortgage rates. That's not necessarily corresponding with the 10 year. So you're seeing that spread between mortgages in the 10 year.

get smaller, which is a good thing. And we're getting much closer or right at where we were pre-pandemic, which is showing a bit more health in that market, even if it is being pushed a little bit by some extraneous factors. So let's go check in with Alex and James and see what's going on with the market.

Okay, James, Alex, welcome. It's Friday. I mentioned we're recording this on Friday because of the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday. There is a bevy of items to talk about, not just recent economic numbers to give you, but we feel like it would be good too after that to do a bit of a recap on what's happened over the past couple of weeks, because we certainly hit the ground hard.

Last time we talked, came in pretty benign, pretty close to what we expected. Is that right?

Yeah, it came in right where we were expecting it, right about 2 and 3 quarter came in 2.6. Expectations were for 2.7. So ⁓ slightly cooler than was expected. Shelter was surprisingly muted, even though they did update it this time around. in at 0.4%, which that was really the one I was keeping an eye on just because, as we all know, the December reading for Shelter was just brought forward from September.

during the government shutdown and so that created an extremely muted inflation rating last time around. So that was the one I was keeping an eye on but no, shelter seemed in a decent spot and what seemed to really pop things on this particular release was food. Food was up 0.7 % so that was dragging things up. But no, everything, the headline numbers came in as expected.

Yeah. Still defying gravity. It bears repeating that we have inflation that's relatively tamed by recent standards, despite all the tariff discussions and still capacity issues. But some of that is some of the things that you mentioned and have been mentioned in the news. I don't know about others out there. Well, I guess I do know we were in Arizona this week. You drive by gas stations. I know in Denver, we're getting close to the one handle on gasoline, which is, think,

One of those sort of macro ways, I feel like you can, you can drive down inflation or hold inflation lower because fuel goes into everything, right? Like the lettuce has to get to the store and it arrives in a truck after it gets off of a boat or whatever. So fuel in general could kind of lower, lower the tide, if you will, and energy in general, especially as you get into the winter months with things like heating. But yeah, we're still not seeing the major increases we thought we would from tariffs.

What else did we have this week? I PPI similar, a little bit higher though, right? So it does seem like producers are potentially and retailers potentially still absorbing some of that, some of those increases where we do see increases in costs.

Yeah, PPI was a delayed value. was the November values. It does actually speak well to what Alex was saying. The main driver this month was in food and what you can see within it, was fruits and vegetables.

were what was really kind of pushing that. So everyone's getting their ⁓ winter stews together, I guess. But that's what drove the producers side of it. And that does show them up core to 3.5%. So above inflation expectations, it's above where you want it. It does kind of look like the producers continue to eat that cost of the tariff, but that's good news on the consumer side of things, kind of leveling out.

Yeah. You know, for those of us again, in the mortgage industry, you think about this as when times get a little bit tighter, margins get a little bit thinner and there was likely some excess capacity there over the past five years as companies were raising prices. They have a little bit of margin that they can let out. And vegetables, mentioned vegetables, I guess I'm kind of guessing now, but we haven't seen the full seasonality of what tariffs could look like. But this time of year, obviously we're not growing potatoes in Idaho.

Idaho is frozen by now. So we are probably certainly importing more fruits and vegetables from countries in warmer climates.

.

Let's see, yes, Monday is the MLK holiday. So are we expecting much in the way of data after that for the four days of the week?

.

you

We have GDP readings

come out on Wednesday for Q3. Those should come in pretty high, determined by CAPEX and AI spending, as we've seen over the last few quarters. It'd be interesting to see if there's any catch up with the general economy. I wouldn't expect there to be. I think it's going to be continuation of what we've come to expect from those GDP readings, where tech and the AI boom in general are.

dragging along the rest of the economy. And then it's not a data release, but we should get some Supreme Court case rulings, namely in regards to Lisa Cook, only having arguments about her potential removal from her position ⁓ and the cascading effect that that could have being if it is deemed that she can be removed for being under investigation that.

Mm-hmm.

.

a pal could also potentially be removed for also being under investigation for criminal charge, even if they haven't been made or found to be guilty of said charge.

Right. That's a super interesting stat there because that just would be immediate precedent for the Powell situation. You're saying if Lisa Cook, if the Supreme Court allows Lisa Cook to be basically indicted, then

you

Right. And it would make what we talked about last week, would make the DOJ's decision to file these charges with less than four months in Powell's tenure remaining. It would make it look like a little bit more politically savvy move, ⁓ given that they could have him removed just about with immediate effect.

Right. All right. That's, think that's a good segue. Let's get right into a recap. Ton has gone on in this first couple of weeks of the year. And again, a lot of it either directly affects interest rates or indirectly affects the housing market. So a lot of it surrounds the feds. So just kind of wanted to go note by note here and just opine really quick riff on these items again, in case anybody missed it on the last few podcasts. Cause I think it's a super important and all leads up to where we are.

.

today on Friday, I'm sure things will happen over the weekend as well, but we, touched the five handle on the OB MMI, which was a super exciting moment. hit like five and three nines or like five, nine, nine, nine,

Okay.

a little above that. Now the new, you know, kind of the, possible criminal charges against Jerome Powell sent rates back up earlier this week, but not back to the levels they were at previously, which was more like six and an eighth, six and a quarter. So let's go, I'll just kind of riff them off and we can.

talk through where we're at on these items. There's not a ton of updates on these as kind of expected. A lot of these came from social media posts or kind of headlines from speaking engagements around the administration, mostly President Trump, but still have a lot to, a lot that remains to be explained,

.

I would say over the coming weeks and months. It could be really good for industry if these are hints or kind of starting points for some initiatives from

the White House over this first quarter. So, I mean, the first thing I would mention that I think got a lot of haunches up around our industry was the announcement on social media that the GSEs were going to be instructed to purchase $200 billion of MBS. We held a special bonus episode last Friday on this subject and we riffed on it a little bit then and since then, no plans have been.

divulged or possibly even been developed, but it seems like this is something that will probably happen and probably happen hopefully in the near future. But again, we don't know what coupons, we don't know how long this program will take. We don't know if there will be additional funds added to this effort. Right? We noted that 200 billion is, it's a lot of money, but it's a drop in the bucket when it comes to buying.

.

interest bearing assets, especially by an entity as large as the GSEs. the Fed purchased many trillions of MBS during COVID. And before that, leading all the way back to the great financial crisis, we also saw the Fed buy a ton of treasuries during that time.

.

It very much seems the real question is, is there gonna be additional funding after that 200 billion? Is this the beginning of a second quantitative easing or is it just this one hit to try and lower rates? If it's this one hit, it could impact for a while much like we saw that five handle for a day here, but it's not going to stick around as long. So that feels like the lingering question that everyone's waiting for.

Agreed. think back to, if you think back to the beginning of the pandemic, obviously different situation. Every asset class was struggling. The financial markets were they were threatening to collapse. But the Fed came in with a limited checkbook. I forget what the number was, but it was in the hundreds of billions. And they went out into open market operations, bought a ton of MBS. Rates plummeted briefly, but very quickly snapped back up.

So I suppose we could see something similar where that demand comes in, snatches up a ton of MBS rates drop for days, weeks, maybe months. But then the market kicks back in and we end up back where we were. But obviously back then, then the Fed came out and said, we have a blank check. We will buy bonds until the bonds are gone. And then that's how we had, you know, two and a half percent interest rates for so long. So to your point, there's going to need to be more than 200 billion to make a major debt for a long period of time.

So we mentioned the Lisa Cook situation, possibly having an impact on the renewed attack on Powell. So to remind everybody that was last weekend, if you haven't watched it, there's a two minute video out there of Jerome Powell explaining that he had been basically served a subpoena for possible criminal charges against him for his handling of the rebuilding or the renovations of several federal reserve buildings, historic federal reserve buildings.

.

you

So that was definitely an escalation in this attack on Powell, just as a person, but also indirectly an attack on the Fed potentially, and maybe a message to the incoming chairperson of the Fed. And I liked your take on this, Alex, just that rates popped back up, which is not what anybody wanted. Because obviously a big reason that the Fed is in the crosshairs is because the Fed is not.

implementing rate policy that the White House would like to see. The White House doesn't feel like they've been aggressive enough in cutting rates. But also it got the haunches up, I think, of some other representatives, even GOP representatives saying, we don't like what's going on at this point. We may have issues with whoever you nominate to replace Powell. We might start blocking those people because we're worried that this is yet another step towards trying to own the Fed.

on the back of the news last week at the DOJ, serving Powell with papers over the weekend. Sapina, Republican from North Carolina, Tillis, he made it very clear that he would block any appointees ⁓ given his spot on the Senate Bank Committee. ⁓ That he would block any nominees anywhere, whether it's Powell's replacement or Lisa Cook replacement, he would block any nominee.

moving forward in the selection process. And I don't know what a Supreme Court ruling would do to the way this currently works, but the way it currently works is if Powell or if anybody else does not have a confirmed successor by the Senate, they will continue to serve in their role, which potentially opens the door to, know, you know, Tillis is blocking nominees, Powell could continue to serve his term longer than May. So that's a door that's open out there.

I don't know if the Supreme Court were to come down and say that Lisa Cook ⁓ needs to be removed immediately and then by effect by that ruling that ⁓ Pal would also need to be removed ⁓ if that would

mean that they're out and then, you know, would we have empty seats at that point? I think that's kind of the world we operate in right now of these are, there's a first time for these things and we're currently in it. So that's something to keep in mind. And like you said, it's the, this DOJ handling did seem to get pushback from congressional Republicans. And I was reading some things that even seems to have caught the Trump, the executive a little bit off guard.

some more reports out there that that Pam Bondi the AG is a little bit of hot water right now with Trump ⁓ And then that this DOJ like I said the DOJ subpoena to how caught the executive a little bit off guard as well. So remains to be seen. There's a lot of moving wheels here, but

Hmm.

Yeah, it really just remains to be seen how the Supreme Court comes down on this and then how strong those congressional Republicans are in their ability to hold out on nominees.

Right. As we've said, if nothing else, the administration is creative and will always have you kind of on your heels. I even I think Jamie Dimon commented on how he felt like Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, he felt like he had kind of had the administration and President Trump figured out, but this one surprised him a little bit. And he's like, I don't know what to do with this, but I know I don't, it's not going to be good for banks. It's not going to be good for anybody. If the Fed continues to lose its reputation as being independent.

Keeping on chasing the banks and the administration making new moves is the potential cap on credit cards at 10%.

Right. So if they're only allowed to charge 10%, a lot of these banks, including JP Morgan step forward and they're saying, Hey, we are going to have to change our risk management then. Right. We have a lot of people who have a FICO score, let's say under seven 20 that we would just have to cut out or, you know, the, the limit on your credit card, might need to lower. So it would have a lot of impact on liquidity and credit, which, know, the modern market, especially America is built on debt and the ability to spend. that would be a huge change.

they actually intend to implement that. Would it be, hey, over a trailing period, you need to get down to 10 % or, know, it's 10 % is maybe the opening bid. Maybe it's 15, maybe it's 16 is kind of the conversation there. But there's a lot of ideas right now coming out of the administration. It almost feels like throwing things against the wall to see what's going to stick.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, as you've said, it's like flooding the zone. It happened a little bit after the inauguration, right? There was this flood of executive orders. Just which one do we focus on? Which ones are serious? Which ones are really going to change the country? And it feels like this early year flood is similar in terms of geopolitical issues and all of these financial initiatives. Yeah, the credit card one is another one. If you haven't read about that, there's a proposed 10 % cap for a year on credit cards, which as you said, bank...

Models aren't set up that way. And I've also read just the behavioral issues that that could cause where on the flip side, right? It's I know when we were all young, a lot of us got into trouble with credit cards at 20 plus percent, but that kind of teaches you a lesson when you start seeing how that interest adds up. If that interest was cut in half or cut into third, I don't know that my behavior would have been better, probably worse. Said, all right, 10%. I can, I could borrow more now or I'm going to, to, continue to carry this debt and might not have changed.

Behaviors as quickly as something is almost punitive as a 20 to 30 percent rate. Again, maybe it's an opening offer, maybe it's just sort of a shot across the bell. We need to figure something out in terms of affordability of credit.

Let's keep it going with some of the financial stuff that I want to get to the geopolitical as well, because that is also flooding the zone. Just today, so as we were recording this, there was this announcement, again, a little scant on details, but creativity about allowing borrowers to use 401k funds as down payments for a home. As far as I know right now, not a ton of

of detail on that, right, Alex? I assume it would have some tax implications, like you don't have to pay the 10 % penalty that you normally would to take money on your 401k early. But what else could you think could the administration be thinking here?

Yeah, scant on details as this just came out this morning. Again, we're recording on Friday the This one seems like one that I think could have legs to Like you said, it would really come down to how much, how many work rounds I can get for the tax carve-outs. you noted, there's a 10 % penalty for withdrawing from your 401k before the retirement age. In addition to that, what's gonna happen to the cap gains tax on those...

those assets that you hold in that account. it's a shame, James had to hop a little bit early today, but he was pointing out, what's keeping me from funneling a large proportion of my paycheck through my 401k and then using that as down payments on homes if you're in a position to do that. So I think there's a lot of kinks to work out there, but I do think that this is one that they could make work. But I don't think at the end of the day it addresses one of the core problems in the housing market in the US today, which is it's a-

it's a supply problem, what this is gonna do is just add more buyers to the market and drive housing costs up, most likely.

Right. Yeah. I mean, if they were to do the trifecta, right? Wave the 10 % wave capital gains. And if it's, if you're using a non Roth 401k, like wave the income tax on that somehow. So I completely avoid income tax forever. I could see that being a pretty big tax advantage. And, uh, but to your point, then do 401k has become this weird intermediary where your, you know, first half of the year, you dump all your income into the 401k and then.

Pull it directly out. Could that have, I don't know, cause fluctuations in the stock market artificially? Could that gaming the system, I don't know, lead people to other loopholes? Who knows? So it'd be interesting to see once the, I don't know, the rest of the administration and the interns get ahold of this, you know, what they find and what they come up with. But again, we have to encourage creativity from the FHFA and from the administration. This could be one of those things pushes affordability.

to a better place, but to your point, it potentially raises the price of housing again. And does this start to defeat itself until we have just a glut of supply that may have to come from, know, hammering away at the lock-in effect, for instance, you know, figure out a way to get these folks like myself, who have a 3 % mortgage out of their current mortgages and moving to a new home.

Yeah, absolutely. think, like I said, I think this is one that could have some steam behind it just because there's already carve outs for taking a loan against your 401k without penalties for a certain period of time and under certain conditions. So I think there's some precedent that's already out there for this.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And again, we're not financial advisors, but of course there's, there's the thought that you want to have money in your 401k. Like your home can't be your only, I believe can't be your only retirement plan. You do need to participate in the stock market, no matter how old you are, just to have some skin in that game and to diversify your investment strategy. Because most of us these days don't have a pension to look forward to. We have to save money to be able to retire at some point in our sixties or later.

The only other, you know, not the only other, but the other financial thing we wanted to bring up that directly affects us in the mortgage industry would be just the ban on institutional buyers of homes. There's been continued debate on that. Again, no plan specifically, but read about this one if you haven't or go back and listen to one of our podcasts from a couple of weeks ago. The White House is moving towards banning institutions, whatever an institution gets to be defined as, which

Alex, you pointed out, we don't know what that looks like yet. Is that a mom and pop that maybe have accumulated 10 plus properties or is it, does it only mean a hedge fund or a ⁓ bank? Cause there are hedge funds who have invested in certain parts of the country and sometimes it's a good thing. They've invested where home prices were dropping and they've come in to prop up that market and rent those homes out. But also some folks think that that activity has artificially pushed prices higher and pushed them.

high enough where in some places it becomes unaffordable for people to buy their first home or even their second home.

Absolutely. One more, you mentioned lock-in and I wanted to bring up one more thing on the financial front before we move on to geopolitics. I don't know if you saw this, but Bill Ackman's also been throwing a couple ideas at the wall in regards to mortgages. And he was saying possible way to get lower rates would be to have a lock-in on when you are allowed to refinance. ⁓ You could get a lower rate if you agreed not to refinance within five years or within 10 years.

Which would you make those cash flows a little bit stickier without paying a penalty? So that's just another idea that's floating out there. I've seen a little bit of commentary both supporting and against it But just another one that you know if I think if that were to get maybe some official ⁓ Word on it from someone at the administration. I think we could we could be having that conversation as well

Yeah, the old prepayment penalty for those of you who are around before the great financial crisis, many loans, especially arm loans, especially like Alta and subprime had prepayment penalties, which meant you could not, you would, would incur a penalty if you paid off the loan or refinanced it within a two to five years. And you got a better rate for that. And that feels, you know, in the parlance of bond speak, that's callability, right? A bond holder will pay more for a bond if the payments are guaranteed.

for a certain period of time. Because the worry is you buy a bond, you pay 105 cents on the dollar for it, and you get a 6 % payment every year, but it pays off in six months. You just lost money, right? But if you're guaranteed three years of interest from that, you at least make your money back plus a premium. And therefore, you could offer a rate that is lower. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Ackman's a pretty creative guy in his own right and thinks about it from kind of the investment strategy side of the business. And that would be.

a way to get rates, you know, it used to be you could get a quarter, three eighths, even half a point lower for that callability feature. So we'll see where that goes. mean, that kind of was done away with during, after the great financial crisis. But I don't know that that was one of the more dangerous features of these loans as much as it was, you the fact you didn't have to divulge your credit score or your assets or your income.

Yeah.

All right. That's a really good one too. I think again, we have to encourage creativity and maybe all of these things add up to better affordability here as we get deeper into 26. And then the geopolitics, that's also something that bears repeating because there's so much going on there that it's difficult to focus on any one item or read enough articles or watching us enough coverage. But as you probably know, we, we, ⁓ made a surgical attack on Venezuela and arrested,

Nicolas Maduro, was the leader of Venezuela at the time. Right now, Venezuela is kind of in limbo in a transition period, being just kind of run by his socialist government at the moment, but we have grand plans to do something there. And I think we have to, because we were the acting, the folks who essentially destabilized that, government of Venezuela. Read what you want about the reasons we did that.

Drugs is one possibility, oil is another. It's probably a combination of things.

from those protests and it looked like to me and to many people, we were going to intervene at some point late last week or late, sorry, mid this week. But from most accounts, there's an eerie quiet over there right now. Like things have kind of quieted down, but Trump did tweet that help is on the way. And we did.

Kind of, you know, we've, we've, we've attacked around before last June. So it wasn't outside of the realm of possibilities that we would do that again. But right now we seem to be standing down. Although I think word as of yesterday is we're moving a lot of our hardware from some of it from the Caribbean, from the Venezuela conflict into the middle East, which would be, you know, maybe a harbinger of something happening.

later on this month or in February. Cause I think, you know, I know I read another article that said Trump was informed that we didn't have enough hardware in that region to do a full on strike. So if we had made a move earlier this week, we might have, we might have risk lives. didn't have to, it might've not been as effective as we needed to be.

You read anything else on that Alex in terms of what might again, we're just speculating as much as anybody in the news right now and what might happen there.

Yeah, no, I think it's no secret that the Trump administration and the US government in general for decades now has been interested in regime change in that country. And like you said, there's at least 2000 deaths, highly likely more than that. ⁓ Yeah, these people were just protesting the cost of living in the country. So a real tragedy there. It does appear that potentially those threats that he made or in conjunction with the

crackdown that was done by the Iranian government both resulted in these protests diminishing. But we'll have to see. I haven't read about our allocation of assets too much across the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, but it wouldn't be any shock to me that we're moving things away from Venezuela now. I think Venezuela remains an open question, but it's no secret to me that I think we want to knock out a couple more of the bad guys around the world.

Mm hmm. Yeah, it seems very overt. It's kind of wild how just transparent most of this is. The reasons may not be completely transparent, but it does seem when the crosshairs are on that we follow through. know, who knows what happens with Greenland? I believe we're the largest military occupation of that country, so I don't know that would take a ton of hardware to do whatever we plan to do there, or if it would even be a military situation versus the diplomatic.

Yeah, that one seems like

a really, that'd be a really silly one to get physically violent over, in my opinion. ⁓ I mean, everyone's already been talking about that. I mean, it would smell the, likely smell the end of NATO. We already been in semi hot water with the Europeans just back and forth over, you know, they're spending on NATO, the Ukraine Russia conflict, ⁓ and everyone's contributions to that. But it would be ⁓ a large misstep in my opinion for us to

Mm-hmm.

do something violent over Greenland, although I do think we will end up with it at some point. I don't think the Europeans would risk their relationships with us over in the long term.

Right. Okay. And then maybe a similar situation with Cuba, ⁓ sad situation there as well. Venezuela was doing a bit to prop up the Cuban economy, supply them with fuel, these things. that's, Cuba was already just in really rough economic poverty shape. So doesn't feel like that would be a situation where we would intervene militarily, but might need to intervene even just on a humanitarian level and may need to assist. There's been.

rumors that we would help assist rebuild their government there.

Yeah, in my opinion, I think the one that could be a successful transition to some new form of governance most recently would be.

Cuba, if you were to ask me about Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, mean, Cuba's been on our list since the Revolution in 59. They've been under sanctions since 61, 62. And I think there's individuals who have a personal, it's personal for them in the administration, namely Marco Rubio, who his family comes from Cuba. So we'll have to see what happens there.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ I don't think it would take much in all honesty to topple that regime, but I don't want to speak out of turn on that either. we'll have to see.

Yeah, I think journalists would agree with you since the Castros are no longer in power there and kind of the lifting of some of the embargoes did a little bit for tourism from what I read. There are some resorts there and those resorts are doing quite well. But it's another situation where you have haves and have nots that are growing further and further apart economically. And some of that is honestly from folks who have moved from Cuba to the US and are sending dollars back.

to Cuba. So those residents actually have a little bit of money in their pocket, but those that don't have relatives in the US or in Europe, really hurting, you know, for simple things like water and electricity.

Yep, yeah, I mean, that's a trend across all three of these countries we're talking about is ⁓ US dollar liquidity is a major problem for all three.

Yes. Okay. And meanwhile, we still have the war in the Ukraine. We have the war in Gaza, just a very, very unstable global political environment, geopolitical environment, yet getting back to rates. Rates have not dropped on any of this kind of instability. that I think that goes to everything we've talked about and you'll hear about from any economist who cares to talk about it these days. It's just, there's so much upward pressure on rates from

again, from all these things we've talked about, know, if NATO is going to, whether they're going to dissolve or not, we have made it clear that the other NATO allies need to double their spending on defense. There's trillions of dollars worth of debt involved with that, including our own, that's increasing. And then the tech debt that we've talked about with all the investment in AI, much of that does not come from equity or cash. comes from, again, raising more more debt. So

The fact that we hit the five handle recently on the OB-MMI I think is pretty exceptional. And I would not expect to go much lower and most people don't, but as soon as we say that something will happen or we will get creative again, or we will intervene in another situation that drives rates just a little bit lower. So you take the good with the bad right now, I suppose.

Yeah, no, right. Raids popping a little bit this morning just on news, Trump threatening tariffs on those who oppose our ⁓ potential annexation of Greenland, which could undo all the tariff negotiations that have occurred over the past eight months.

Right. Sounds like similar with Iran. Basically, we're using those tariffs again as a threat to say, if you don't back us in our endeavors or our ambitions right now, we're going to use financial retribution, which is a tool and it is a nonviolent tool.

All right. I'm sure we missed a couple of things there, Alex, but we believe these are the things to keep an eye on, especially as it relates to interest rates, the housing market, the mortgage industry. And we will talk again about things very soon and we'll always have a bonus episode of something really big comes out kind of midweek.

Absolutely. Thanks, Jim. See

All right, thank you, James. Thank you, Alex. Appreciate the time. Appreciate the wisdom. Take care.

All right, let's wrap this thing up. Thanks so much, Alex James, world-class conversation wisdom as always. Thank you so much. A lot going on. Don't forget our summit. The Optimal Blue Summit is coming up here in a little over a month. Summit.optimalblue.com is the website to go register, check out the agenda, check out our list of speakers, which grows every week, by the way. So you haven't, if you haven't checked it out recently, go check that out. That's it for today.

Join us next week for another episode of Optimal Insights, where we'll continue to provide you with the latest market analysis and insights to help you stay ahead. Check out our full videos on YouTube. You can also find each episode on all major podcast platforms. Thanks again for tuning into Optimal Insights.