Borrowers can set aside worries of rising rates this long weekend; Friday's data will leave nothing rising except maybe BBQ lids.

Indeed, Friday was a good day for low-rate lovers, courtesy of GDP temporarily falling off a cliff. And should next week’s jobs figures bomb as well, mortgage rates could tumble further.

The world heavyweight champ of inflation data, U.S. core PCE, nailed expectations dead-on. It also climbed to its highest in five months while U.S. Treasuries remain unchanged. That left many to wonder, why aren't bond traders more worried?

Plummeting exports and business investment did a number on Canada's economy, but that was predictable as November rain in Vancouver.

Today’s GDP release is proof that you have to dig below the surface to infer how mortgage rates might react. Hence why we spend extra time dissecting the numbers, instead of recycling headlines like a parrot that just discovered BNN.

The annualized headline number was hideous, no doubt. But under the hood, the domestic engine is still running. It's more jalopy than race car, but it hasn’t coughed up smoke just yet.

Thursday’s macro data looked like a Rorschach test for economists—everyone saw what they wanted and yields went nowhere. The real action comes Friday morning, with Canadian GDP and U.S. PCE inflation.

Wednesday featured no major macro drivers. That gave traders extra time to watch the White House try to muscle the Fed, like a backseat driver grabbing the wheel and insisting they know the shortcut.

U.S. bonds staged a rally Tuesday, and some of that momentum drifted north, dragging down our 5-year yield by 2 bps. (Bond prices and yields move inversely.)

For now, Canadas remain adrift at sea, awaiting trade or inflation clarity. Until our 5-year bond (now 2.96%) closes above 3.04% or below 2.90% (August's range), the daily 2-5 bps zig-zags we've been seeing are mostly noise.

Episode #2 of Stress Test This stars the man working to make Pine a household name in mortgages: CEO and Co-founder Justin Herlick.

As you're about to see, Pine does a lot of things right. Its method is part stopwatch, part spreadsheet: time and measure everything, take every wasted second out of the origination process, chop funding costs, and grow its net promoter score—which Herlick says maximizes word-of-mouth and lowers Pine's customer acquisition costs.

Pine is no tech slouch, but its people matter just as much as its automation. The company has low agent attrition because it does all the client chasing ("top of funnel work") for its reps, delivers ultra-low rates and fair compensation based on customer satisfaction.

We also dig into how Pine is leveraging AI, how it uses AI coding tools, how it scores agents in real-time, its philosophy on AI search, how it manages back-end funders, and where Herlick sees broker market share in 2035.

For mortgage pros allergic to marathon interviews, this one’s a quick shot of competitive insight—practical takeaways from an industry leader in our signature 9.9 minutes. Enjoy...

Yields yo-yoed on Monday after Friday's apparent Fed easing bias met skepticism. Here’s where the day's headlines drove yields: