Yen Kai's Idea Cast

Here’s a newsworthy event – The 3-month SOR fell to 0.44% yesterday. This is a whopping drop of 1.1% over the last 3 days! This makes SOR more attractive than SIBOR (3-month) which continues to hold at 0.69%. In fact, at 0.44%, the 3-month SOR is at the same level as the 1-month SIBOR. The fall in SOR might have something to do with the falling US dollar.

The recent property buying frenzy has given rise to increased interest in interest rates, as evident from the higher traffic volume to this blog (thanks for visiting!). I reckon it’s time to do a roundup on interest rates.

SOR hits yet another low, at 0.59%. And this happens on my SOR-pegged home loan re-pricing date, bringing the interest rate down to 1.35% for the next 3 months. This is simply amazing. Previously i had been very tempted to switch over to the home loan package pegged to the 1-month SIBOR rate which, at 0.44%, plus the 0.85% margin the bank charges (for 1 year lock-in), stands at 1.29% overall. Compared to that, the interest rate i am getting, at 1.35% fixed for 3 months (3-month SOR) isn’t too bad at all.

SOR just broke through the previous recorded low of 0.68% set on 27 Nov 2008 to hit 0.67% on 27 May 2008, exactly half a year later. One of the driving factors for this is of course is the diving Libor, which happens to be hovering at a range (0.66-0.68%) similar to SOR.

Quite a bit has happened in the past few weeks. The Federal Reserve took the unconventional step of buying treasuries in a bid to lower interest rates. It seems to have worked, as mortgage rates in the US to fell to a record low. Analysts expect Bernanke to continue buying treasuries and keep rates low.

SOR has been on the rise, probably in tandem with Libor as well as USD/SGD exchange rates, while SIBOR continues to hold still at 0.69%. This highlights the difference between market vs. policy driven interest rates.

Having done the latest round of online survey, i noticed that generally home loan rates are on the rise. Given that SIBOR is quite low now, banks may be making up for it by charging a higher margin. Even though many loans are tied to SIBOR, I suspect that the funds made available for home loans are not necessarily obtained from SIBOR linked sources and may come with a higher cost, which banks will have to recover by charging higher interest.

Bond prices fell following the US Treasury announcement to issue more bonds and more frequently, sending the ten-year note yield above 3%. Even the shorter-term 2-year note yield and the Libor 3-month rate have been trending up.

Quoting from the SIBOR wikipedia entry,

SIBOR stands for Singapore Interbank Offered Rate and is a daily reference rate based on the interest rates at which banks offer to lend unsecured funds to other banks in the Singapore wholesale money market (or interbank market).