You can rest assured that no animals were harmed in the making of this commentary! But the harm felt by stockholders during the last several months has not been trivial, and not only confined to lenders. As has been discussed in this Commentary, just because the open market can see their stock prices fall doesn’t mean those companies are faring any worse, or better, than non-public companies. And other companies in related industries have not fared much better. For example, Redfin (a full-service real estate brokerage that owns lender Bay Equity) hit a high of over $95 a share and hit a low a few weeks ago of $7.13. Put another way, if you had sunk your life savings of $1 million into Redfin stock in February of 2021 your life savings would stand at $75,000. Ouch. The speed and magnitude of the rate move in 2022 has hurt many, but to keep things in perspective remember that the highest interest rates were in October 1981, a whopping 18.45 percent. Fortunately, no one is talking about rates moving up that high, and in fact there is a growing school of thought that mortgage rates may have plateaued for the foreseeable future leaving LOs asking, “What kind of products can we offer clients to blunt the impact of these higher rates?” Capital markets and product departments to the rescue! (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by Ignite Integration Solutions, Inc., a custom software provider that has created industry leading LOS CORE integrations in addition to a library of Encompass base tools and plug ins, and custom API development with our team of 100% on shore developers to support both Mortgage Lenders and Vendors as clients and partners.)