Q4 2024 Dynex Capital Inc Earnings Call
Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Dynex Capital fourth quarter and full year 2024 results conference call.
All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again press star 1.
Speaker Change: Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Alison Griffin, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.
Alison Griffin: Good morning and thank you for joining us for Dynex Capital's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call.
Alison Griffin: The press release associated with today's call was issued and filed with the SEC this morning, January 27, 2025. You may view the press release on the homepage of the Dynex website at dynexcapital.com as well as on the SEC's website at sec.gov.
Alison Griffin: Before we begin, we wish to remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words believe, expect, forecast, anticipate, estimate, project, plan, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties.
Alison Griffin: some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. The company's actual results and timing of certain events could differ considerably from those projected and are contemplated by those forward-looking statements as a result of unforeseen external factors or risks.
Alison Griffin: For additional information on these factors or risks, please refer to our disclosures filed with SEC, which may be found on the DINEX website under Investor Center as well as on the SEC's website.
Alison Griffin: This conference call is being broadcast live over the internet with a streaming slide presentation which can be found through the webcast link on the homepage of our website.
Alison Griffin: The slide presentation may also be referenced under quarterly reports on the Investor Center page.
Speaker Change: Joining me on the call today are Byron Boston, Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer,
Speaker Change: Smriti Popenoe, Co-Chief Executive Officer and President, Rob Colligan, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, and T.J. Connelly, Chief Investment Officer. I now have the pleasure of turning the call over to Byron.
Speaker Change: Thank you, Alison, and good morning, everyone. We continue to advance SteinX along the path of growing a resilient, sustainable business for the long term.
Speaker Change: We are focused on delivering value at the intersection of capital markets and housing finance, where we believe there will be sustained opportunity to generate compelling yields.
Speaker Change: Demographic trends continue to support our thesis for financing residential real estate.
Speaker Change: The single-family housing market has shown resilience in the face of higher interest rates, and multi-family housing continues to be an area of growth due to the high demand for housing.
Speaker Change: The team is diligently assessing the best risk-adjusted returns, which currently remain an agency-backed, single-family residential MBS.
Speaker Change: As the chairman and co-CEO, I'm excited about the company we are and the company we are becoming. We are well positioned for the global macroeconomic landscape, which is moving rapidly.
Speaker Change: Upcoming policy changes are likely to have a significant impact on people, economies, and financial markets.
Speaker Change: The investment environment continues to offer significant long-term value in the agency RMBS market, and as Smriti will describe, the team is focused on flexibility as we navigate the year ahead.
Speaker Change: Thank you, Byron. Today I'm pleased to announce the appointment of T.J. Connelly as our Chief Investment Officer.
Speaker Change: TJ has a brilliant mind and is a wonderful person whose career I've followed since our early days together at Freddie Mac. It has been a delight working with him at Dynex since 2023. He embodies our core values and is already a key member of the Dynex leadership team.
Speaker Change: I'm really excited for his fresh perspective on our investing strategy, and I wish him great success in this role.
Speaker Change: Byron and I continue to build the company across the dimensions of people, process, and technology.
Speaker Change: We grew our common equity capital to over $1 billion and deployed it wisely as the market gave us opportunities.
Speaker Change: The year-over-year growth in our common capital base of over 40% drove significant benefits to scale, which Rob will outline in more detail.
Speaker Change: We expanded our investor outreach, meaningfully increased trading liquidity in our stock, raised our dividend to reflect our confidence in the return environment, all of which has translated to a solid improvement in the price-to-book ratio.
Speaker Change: We believe Dynex deserves and will attain a premium-to-book value valuation.
Speaker Change: The share price does not yet reflect the meaningful benefits of future growth.
Speaker Change: Much improved liquidity in the stock, nor the ethically managed high-quality liquid investment product we deliver. We will continue to drive effort in this direction.
Speaker Change: Most importantly, we are building a track record to be proud of.
Speaker Change: Through December 2024, among agency-focused mortgage REITs, the Dynex team has generated the leading total shareholder return for one, three, and five years inclusive of the dividend.
Speaker Change: A result produced during some of the most challenging market conditions post-Great Financial Crisis.
Speaker Change: When you include non-agency and credit-focused mortgage REITs with market caps above $500 million, Dynex leads on a one- and five-year basis and has the second-best record on a three-year basis.
Speaker Change: Last year's 7% total economic return and 13.7% total shareholder return was delivered in an environment where the 10-year Treasury yield made two 100-basis point round trips and mortgage spreads, though better behaved in 2023, traded in a 40-basis point range.
Speaker Change: We are producing strong, industry-leading returns. The experience and expertise of the team has been invaluable in building this record and will continue to be a differentiator for DynX in the future.
Speaker Change: I'll now turn it over to Rob and TJ for a more detailed financial picture of 2024, our current thinking, and outlook for 2025.
Thank you and good morning to everyone joining today's call.
Speaker Change: The Fed's three interest rate cuts in the second half of 2024 provided a great tailwind for our portfolio and, for the first time in two years, the yield curve has uninverted, allowing us to invest in assets with a positive carry.
Speaker Change: while the swap book is still net positive and adds net spread to the portfolio.
Speaker Change: During the fourth quarter, the 10-year Treasury was up nearly 80 basis points.
Speaker Change: And from the end of the third quarter, mortgage threads were broadly wider.
Speaker Change: Book value ended the quarter at $12.70 per share, and the economic return was 1% for the quarter and 7.4% for the year.
Speaker Change: Leverage was up as we added pools and TBAs during the fourth quarter during periods of spread widening.
Speaker Change: Interest income was up from the third quarter from the active addition of higher-yielding assets into the portfolio, while older, lower-yielding assets continue to pay down.
Speaker Change: We kept their financing books short in anticipation of cuts to the Fed Funds Rate, and we leaned into lower borrowing costs as soon as they were available.
Speaker Change: In the second half of 2024, and particularly in the fourth quarter, we rotated a large portion of our hedge position from futures to swaps.
Speaker Change: Given this change, you'll see an improvement in our net interest spread as the periodic swap income received is included in the spread metric and has enhanced portfolio yield.
Speaker Change: TJ will cover hedge strategy and construction more in his comments.
Speaker Change: Please see page 6 in the earnings release covering the hedging portfolio and page 10 in the earnings presentation for more detail on this topic.
Speaker Change: In the fourth quarter, we raised $64 million of new capital, and we continue to keep ample levels of liquidity to deploy into markets like we are seeing now, marked by higher yields, wider spreads, lower financing costs, and a supportive derivative market to hedge our portfolio.
Speaker Change: while executing on several important strategic initiatives, particularly on the IT and marketing fronts.
Speaker Change: Expense management will continue to be a focus going into 2025 to ensure our expenses create value for the portfolio and our shareholders, underscoring the benefits of scale.
Speaker Change: As we have grown, we have narrowed the price-to-book ratio, which has been a significant benefit for our shareholders.
Speaker Change: This allows us to continue to grow, achieve scale, and deploy capital into an attractive market.
Speaker Change: A Read at Scale is a more valuable company and will continue to attract a higher price-to-book multiple over the long term.
TJ: I'll now turn it over to TJ for the Investment Portfolio Outlook.
TJ: Thank you, Rob. It's an honor to have the opportunity to lead the investment process at Dynex. As only the third CIO since 2008, I have tremendous examples of stewardship to guide me in this role. I joined this team in 2023 for two reasons.
TJ: First, after 12 years working with the DYNEC team as an external partner, I had the opportunity to get to know nearly everyone at the company, and I can say without question that this is one of the best and most underappreciated mortgage investment teams out there.
TJ: Second, the opportunities in mortgage-backed securities remain some of the best I've seen in my career. Government intervention continues to ease, allowing private capital to earn a significant interest income premium relative to other fixed income products.
Extracting the yield in mortgages requires immense skill and discipline.
TJ: I continue to believe that Dynex's team and infrastructure are uniquely positioned to deliver equity-like returns from this fixed income product, and I'm excited to leverage this team's talents for a larger investor base.
TJ: Thoughtful risk management focused on leverage and liquidity will remain the hallmark of our process.
TJ: Government policy has always been part of investing in U.S. fixed income. This year, investors will likely hear more about the potential for GSE reform.
TJ: Our base case for the coming year is that talk of reform could create volatility and spread, likely offering an opportunity for us to deploy capital accretively, much like we did last year around the election.
TJ: GSE privatization could have significant implications for housing finance, especially as stretched affordability and inflation continues to weigh on households.
TJ: Two things will be central to the dialogue. One, the GSEs need to raise significant capital to meet regulatory thresholds.
TJ: And two, the Treasury guarantee in the existing line of credit will be critical to maintain the stability and liquidity of agency MBS.
Speaker Change: The team at Dynex monitors these developments closely and is actively engaged with Washington to remain at the forefront of policy changes.
Speaker Change: selected securities with better risk characteristics and shifted our hedges at the tights in swap spreads.
Speaker Change: Our booked value also benefited from the long dated hedges as the yield curve steepened.
Speaker Change: Specifically, we raised $64 million in new capital in the quarter. We deployed that and the capital from previous quarters, buying 900 million 30-year four-and-a-halfs, fives, and five-and-a-half percent coupons, split about 50-50 in TBA and specified pools, increasing leverage from 7.6 to 7.9 in the quarter.
Speaker Change: We like the flexibility of TVAs and balance that against a call protection in specified pools to optimize hedge costs.
Speaker Change: We continue to execute a major shift in our hedge strategy, moving over two-thirds of our hedges from futures into interest rate swaps at historically advantageous levels.
Speaker Change: Interest rate swaps can enhance our portfolio ROE by 200 to 300 basis points.
after adjusting for their higher initial margin requirements.
Speaker Change: The fourth quarter saw the recent Tyson swap spread, which we believe adequately compensates for the potential of higher Treasury issues.
Turning now to The Outlook.
Speaker Change: The macro backdrop is evolving quickly. The U.S. economy has shown remarkable resilience and we expect the Fed to take a wait-and-see approach as new administration policy changes could have a significant impact on the path of growth and inflation.
Speaker Change: Our framework is not to predict, but to prepare, and we are positioning the portfolio for pockets of volatility. There will be surprises, and our robust liquidity position should allow us to navigate those moments, capitalizing on our allocation to money-good assets.
Speaker Change: In our view, agency RMVS have the best relative and absolute return potential versus other fixed income alternatives.
Speaker Change: Today's return environment is still among the best I've seen and offers the possibility of earning double-digit ROEs.
Speaker Change: Nominal spreads on agency RMBS have been in the range of 135 to 140 basis points over seven-year treasuries and 175 to 185 over swaps.
These spreads offer compelling returns as is.
and they've stabilized in a range.
Speaker Change: Several factors support spreads remaining at these levels or even tightening.
Speaker Change: A positively sloped yield curve has been associated with healthy demand for fixed income historically, and that will likely drive robust demand for agency RMBX.
Speaker Change: Net issuance in 2025 will likely remain modest in the $200-$250 billion area with mortgage rates in the 6-7% range.
Speaker Change: Bond fund flows have been positive at these higher yields and could accelerate given the sizable holdings in money market funds.
Speaker Change: And finally, banks returned in 2024, buying specified pools across the coupon stack and structured agency MBS. With many of the banks hedging their duration in swaps, we expect the bank bid can drive spread tighter over the year.
Speaker Change: Security selection will remain a focus. We have continued to diversify across coupons and specified pools that require less active hedging. Avoiding mortgages with the most uncertain durations remain critical and will likely remain so for some time. Our coupon allocation reflects this view.
Speaker Change: And this is an important nuance that might get missed. ETFs and other passive bond funds with current coupon TVA allocations may have optically higher yields, but those investments could underperform in environments like we saw this past October.
Speaker Change: On the financing front, repo markets stabilized late in the year, particularly after the Fed made modest tweaks to the rate on the reverse repo program and made the standing repo facility slightly easier to use.
Relatively small changes help lower funding costs, especially around year-end.
Speaker Change: That traffic jam we wrote about in the Dynex angle on LinkedIn in the fourth quarter has largely been relieved. Mortgage repo rates relative to SOFR were around SOFR plus 25 basis points. More recently, we're seeing spread to SOFR of less than 20 basis points.
Speaker Change: Liquidity remains plentiful, and I'm optimistic about mortgage repo costs in 2025.
Speaker Change: Overall, we remain in a favorable investment environment. We expect that agency, residential, and multifamily MBS will remain the focus of our investments for many quarters to come.
Speaker Change: As the yield curve steepens, we will look for value in structured products like agency CMOs. Spreads are not yet attractive enough for us to allocate into agency CMVS, but we actively monitor relative value and would diversify as opportunities arrive.
Speaker Change: This is an exciting time for me as a mortgage investor to take over leadership of such a strong team and infrastructure. Yield spreads in mortgages offer a substantial margin of safety for investors, and the upside potential from eventual spread tightening is significant.
Speaker Change: Before I turn it back to Smriti, I'd like to thank the executive team and our board of directors and all our shareholders for your trust and partnership.
Speaker Change: Thanks TJ. The team at Dynex is at the forefront of policy discussions in Washington providing the perspective from private capital on behalf of our shareholders and working to ensure that the MBS market remains robust and effective.
Speaker Change: As the oldest publicly traded mortgage rate, the company has seen many policy cycles. Byron and I have been preparing for shifting policy for over a decade now at Dynex.
Speaker Change: Proactive engagement, flexibility, and liquidity are important parts of our strategy to navigate through this policy environment.
Speaker Change: Looking ahead, we will continue to build the business to leverage our expertise to deliver compelling yields to our shareholders from the residential real estate mortgage market. Several factors are in place to advance our track record of delivering industry-leading returns.
Speaker Change: We remain in an accretive investment environment in which raising and deploying capital drives long-term value by creating scale and dividends.
Speaker Change: We're confident in the company's ability to deliver on our dividends propelled by current and future returns. And as always, the Dynex Management team and board are co-invested alongside you, our shareholders. We appreciate your continued support. I'll now open the call to questions.
Speaker Change: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 in your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again.
Speaker Change: Your first question comes from the line of Boze George from KBW. Your line is open.
Hi, everyone. Good morning.
Speaker Change: First, can you walk through the drivers of the shift from Treasury futures to swaps this quarter and any impact that has on spreads? And also, just from an accounting perspective, you noted, I guess, the GAAP EPS now is closer to the, I guess,
Speaker Change: the EAD. But does the prior, you know, deferred gains get added? Like, do you end up with a period where the EAD ends up higher than the, you know, than sort of economic return?
Speaker Change: I'm going to start with the structure and then I'll get into the accounting.
Speaker Change: We can add 200 to 300 basis points of marginal ROE.
Speaker Change: Thank you for joining us. We're going to go ahead and get started. We're going to go ahead and get started.
Speaker Change: taking that gain on a very linear basis over 10 years,
We always embrace expertise.
Speaker Change: time period over which those gains are obviously different than the futures which have been taken over a straight-line basis. We'll continue to give those numbers to you each quarter as the portfolio…
Speaker Change: Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: So, okay, great, thank you. And then, actually, can we just get an update on book value, quarter data, any big changes?
Speaker Change: Yeah, we have that, Bose. It's essentially flat since the end of the quarter.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from a line of Doug Harder from UBS. Your line is open.
Doug Harder: Thanks. Can you talk about your strategy for continuing to grow the capital base in 2025?
Speaker Change: you know, and how you think about, you know, issuing at a discount, you know, given that you've achieved a billion dollar size, you know, and how that might change, you know, that the pace of that might change if you started trading at a premium.
Yeah, hi. Hi Doug. Good morning. Thanks for the question.
Doug Harder: So, you know, overall, I think our strategy has been predicated upon the investment environment.
Doug Harder: Right, and we've said that when the investment environment allows us to...
Doug Harder: invest capital at ROEs that are greater than the level of the long-term level of the dividend that we We think that's an accretive environment and that's an environment in which it makes sense for us to to grow the company
None of that has changed.
Doug Harder: As we're coming into 2025, as T.J. mentioned, you're seeing mortgage spreads still be in the 130s, 140s versus treasuries, 170s, 180s versus swaps. These are solid, healthy ROEs that we believe are long-term accretive.
So that hasn't changed.
You know
Doug Harder: what is it, where do we want to get to in terms of size
Doug Harder: As Rob mentioned during the call, you know, we have seen now...
Doug Harder: significant benefits to scale. 70 basis points improvement in the G&A ratio. These are meaningful changes and occur directly to the benefit of common shareholders.
Doug Harder: So, that's something that we believe is still a very powerful driver and reason to continue to grow the company.
And I think you've heard Byron and I say together.
Doug Harder: The company starts to lose strategic maneuverability, and I can tell you we're not there yet.
Doug Harder: So, our intent is to continue to grow and we're going to do it the same way that we have, which is in a disciplined manner, making sure that we're investing the capital as we go along.
Doug Harder: and, you know, only raising it when and if it makes sense for us to make the investment.
Great, I appreciate that, Ms. Murthi.
Speaker Change: In your prepared remarks, you talked about the potential for GSE reform.
Speaker Change: or change in ownership, you know, can you talk about, you know, kind of how you think the MBS market is currently pricing that in and kind of how you think about the potential risks?
Speaker Change: that could come from a change in the guarantee or change in the current structure.
Yes, yeah, thanks. Thanks again.
Speaker Change: even coming into your end and watching to see how they've changed as the new administration has taken shape here.
Speaker Change: To me, to us, it just seems like a very small percentage.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: is being priced in of anything meaningfully different from where things stand today, right? So the NBS market has discounted, for the most part, the probability of change, and if there is any sort of risk premium that's being built in, the probability assigned to it is small.
Speaker Change: One of the things that we look back at over time, if you look at the earnings chart, the earnings deck, there's a page in there where we show you what happened to spread from well into the 90s.
Speaker Change: In the 90s, the GSEs operated as private entities. Byron, myself, TJ, all of us worked there.
Speaker Change: There wasn't an explicit guarantee for agency MBS at the time, there was an implicit guarantee.
Speaker Change: So, is it possible for things to sort of operate in that way? I believe that, you know, that is possible. The pathway from here to there, though, there is, you know, is very difficult in our opinion. And it's not clear that there's a real benefit to homeowners.
Speaker Change: of mortgage rates being substantially lower of having the GSEs operate in that private structure.
Speaker Change: So, for that reason, you know, and you've got to weigh that against the idea of disrupting sort of a housing finance system that's already working, and that cost-benefit is not as clear.
Speaker Change: So, in our opinion, you know, our operating assumption is yes, you know, could we get there? Yes. But the hurdle to get there is actually quite substantial.
Great. Appreciate it.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from a line of Trevor Cranston from JMP Securities. Your line is open.
Trevor Cranston: Thanks, good morning. Follow-up question on the, you know, the shift in the hedge portfolio, you know, more into swaps and out of Treasuries.
Trevor Cranston: I guess if we see swap spreads kind of stay around current levels would you expect that shift to continue to move more into swaps or is there some kind of continued benefit to maintaining the portion of the hedges and treasuries at this point? Thanks.
Trevor Cranston: Yeah, hi Trevor, good morning. I'd say the the hedge portfolio is roughly where we want things to be given the current market environment at this point.
Okay, got it.
Speaker Change: In terms of, you know, rate sensitivities, you know, looking at the updated tables this quarter, looks like you guys are positioned
Speaker Change: more to you know sort of benefit more in a downrate scenario compared to where you were last quarter. Can you maybe just elaborate a little bit on your sort of near-term
Speaker Change: Thoughts on the rate market and I guess I'd also particularly be interested in your thoughts on how Rateball plays out over the course of the year. Thanks
Sure, let me just address the
duration profile as of quarter end.
You remember that that duration profile moves with rate.
Speaker Change: And we've adjusted our hedges a little since quarter end to add to our steepener and be a bit more balanced in the parallel profiles.
Speaker Change: I can actually update you on those numbers. Up 100 was at minus 8.2, it's now minus 5.9 as of.
Speaker Change: Thursday night down 100 was minus 4.2 so you see a much more balanced profile so in that sense I want to be clear that we're not taking duration views we are seeking to extract the spread that's available in mortgages and of course you know with the duration uncertainty of the mortgages the model numbers that you see there do move around. As far as our rate view more broadly
Speaker Change: You know, I think that there's, as we said, the front end will probably remain a bit more, a bit less volatile. The back end, certainly there's a lot more uncertainty with the fiscal picture and the administration changes, what policy will look like, not just tax policy, but across the board.
Speaker Change: and still be able to extract a lot of the yield spread that's available.
Speaker Change: The Shape of the Yield Curve is now offering us the ability to earn carry and carry can cure a lot of ills and also can cushion a lot of volatility.
Yeah, makes sense. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from a line of Eric Hagen from VTIG. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Hey, thanks. Good morning. Maybe actually following up on that last point you guys were just making, if we see the yield curve steepen further from here, do you envision taking maybe more risk in the portfolio and do you think you'd accomplish that more with a longer duration gap or is there room to...
Speaker Change: Raise leverage and how much liquidity do you see maybe keeping under each of those kind of scenarios?
Speaker Change: When we look at what returns are being offered to us when we buy mortgages relative to swaps, or even relative to treasuries here, these are good long-term double-digit returns.
And so, you know, taking risk up.
Speaker Change: We would really have to see meaningful trade-offs in taking that risk up relative to the return we might get from taking the risk up.
Speaker Change: That is a good return environment as far as we're concerned. So to take risk up...
Speaker Change: You know the return from taking duration risk, the return from taking incremental spread risk really has to
Speaker Change: be accretive in the long term, those would be the impetuses for us to take risk up. I'll let T.J. just tell you, talk to you just about the overall view on on spread here. But I think.
Speaker Change: At this point, taking those types of risks, we'd have to feel really confident that
that we're getting paid to do that.
Speaker Change: Yeah, look, spread volatility has come down, you know, trading in the 130 to 150 area for the better part of the last several quarters now. I think there's still...
Speaker Change: scope for spreads to move slowly tighter, probably as implied volatility starts to move lower in rates. And once we get deeper into this year and have a better idea of the fiscal situation, I think that's quite conceivable.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I mean for my second question here, I mean, I guess we'll just kind of follow up on all this stuff Not maybe ask about the prepayment environment. I mean if the outlook is for rates to
Speaker Change: remain relatively high. I mean, I think you guys mentioned the opportunity for rate shocks and pockets of volatility. I mean, how do you still price in the risk to spread? Does it, you know, relates to short-term rallies and rates? You know, the aggressive targeting that we might see from originators against that backdrop.
Speaker Change: Yeah, that's really critical. And we saw what I'll call kind of a mini refi wave in September really came through in the October prepayment reports.
Speaker Change: And there are certain segments of this market that are just very, very refinanceable, and that's what I was getting at in my prepared remarks about specified pools being very important, avoiding some of those borrowers who are going to refinance very, very quickly.
Speaker Change: extremely negatively convex and it's been a lot about security selection and and coupon selection being a you know a little bit lower coupons I think those we saw six and a half and six is paid prepaid very fast levels
Speaker Change: in that last wave. So we're going to get those kinds of events and that's how we're preparing our portfolio for those.
Yep. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you. Thanks, Eric.
Speaker Change: Again, if you'd like to ask a question, press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from a line of Jason Stewart from JANI. Your line is open.
Jason Stewart: Hey, thanks, good morning, and congrats, TJ, well-deserved there. I appreciate the comments on GST reform, and maybe you could just touch on one topic we haven't talked about so far.
Jason Stewart: And that's, you know, with the new FHFA director, where you see the origination footprint of the GSEs moving and whether that, you know, has supply applications for the agency mortgage market.
Jason Stewart: you would expect to see a smaller footprint, right, and higher sort of
Speaker Change: 8 years, it's really sort of like the actions and the actual policies that get implemented that matter. It's difficult to say just because someone is nominated that the policy is going to be A, B, or C. We're waiting to see what the actual actions are.
Speaker Change: First the market's going to react to the anticipated policy changes, right? You're going to get that kind of headline reaction
Speaker Change: Then second you're going to have the perception and reflective period where policy makers are actually going to respond to the initial market reaction So there's going to be this back-and-forth reaction between markets and the messages from policy makers
Speaker Change: And then finally, third, we're going to have the ultimate policy change implementation. So this is going to be a long process, and I think there's going to be a real back and forth between markets and policy makers.
Speaker Change: Yeah. Okay, that's good color. I tend to agree with you too. And then, Samriti, one follow-up on Bo's question on book. Was that book value number flat quarter-to- date as of Thursday or is that sort of including today's rate move?
Speaker Change: It would be as of as of the close of Friday and it is net of the dividend.
Got it. Okay. Thanks very much.
Speaker Change: And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Byron Boston for closing remarks.
Byron Boston: Happy New Year. Thank you very, very much for joining us today. And we look forward to updating you again next quarter. Thank you.
Byron Boston: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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