Jordan Jackson:                

Hi, my name is Jordan Jackson, global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management. And welcome to On The Minds of Investors. Today's post asked the question, how does a softening housing market complicate the Federal Reserve's quantitative tightening plan? The housing market has had a difficult year. Mortgage rates have skyrocketed from 3.1% to over 6%, and home prices are up 18% year over year. As a result, housing affordability has been crushed, leading to a sizable decline in single family housing construction, and mortgage origination activity. Given the slow down in the housing sector, investors are curious how this may impact the mortgage backed securities or MBS portion of the Federal Reserve, or Fed's balance sheet, under their quantitative tightening program and the investment implications for mortgage investors. For the Fed and MBS investors, to move higher in mortgage rates has two important implications. First, it reduces mortgage prepayments. When mortgage rates rise, homeowners are less likely to prepay their mortgage or refinance into a new mortgage as it would be more costly.

Therefore, number two, higher interest rates increase the duration of MBS securities. Because prepayments have slowed, the duration of MBS investment increases as owners continue to make mortgage payments for longer, extending the maturity profile of these securities. The reduction mortgage prepayments has consequences for the Fed's QT program specifically, first, because prepayments have slowed, the level of mortgage is rolling off the balance sheet will fall well below the Fed's $35 billion monthly cap for some time. In fact, we estimate a roughly 20 billion pace of MBS pay downs to the middle of next year. Second, compositionally, the Fed's share of mortgages on its balance sheet may increase even as the overall size of the balance sheet declines due to the higher runoff cap of US Treasuries and slower MBS prepayments.

The issue for the Fed is most committee members would prefer a US Treasury only balance sheet, given the Fed now owns 30% of the MBS market. For this to be achieved, the Fed would need to sell mortgages. If they were to do so, a reasonable assumption could be selling the difference between actual pay downs and the $35 billion monthly cap. For MBS investors, to feed through of slow and pre payments, increasing mortgage duration poses a challenge. Taking a step back, MBS securities are attractive to institutions and banks given their unique characteristics to traditional bonds. Unlike traditional bonds, when MBS yields rise, duration also increases. This is known as negative convexity.

Indeed, the option adjusted duration for the broad MBS index has risen from 1.1 years in May, 2020, to 5.8 years today. With yields rising rapidly as Fed tightening expectations are ratcheted higher, the macro environment has made it less attractive for institutions to hold MBS, given their preference for a shorter maturity paper. All things considered, the combination of software institutional demand and Fed quantitative tightening painted challenging backdrop for MBS investors. That said, selectivity is key. Higher coupon mortgages and specified pools where a details of the bonds are known, appear most attractive in today's environment.