| Rates on 30-year mortgages sink, match record low; The London Stock Exchange PLC halted trading for three-and-a-half hours |
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--(www.FinancialNewsUSA.com)-- 11/28/2009 - Mortgage Investment industry news provided by Financial News USA. Average rates for 30-year fixed mortgages fell this week, matching a record low set last spring and more than a full percentage point below what they were a year ago, Freddie Mac said Wednesday. Rates for 30-year mortgages averaged 4.78 percent this week, down from 4.83 percent last week and equaling the record low reached the week of April 30. Freddie Mac has been tracking rates on 30-year fixed mortgages since 1971. Last year at this time, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage averaged 5.97 percent. Interest rates began dropping last November, when the Federal Reserve began spending $1.25 trillion to buy up mortgage-backed securities in an effort to lower rates, loosen credit availability and bolster the long-suffering housing market. Since April, rates have hovered near 5 percent, spurring refinance activity. The London Stock Exchange PLC halted trading for three-and-a-half hours on Thursday after a technical glitch prevented some customers from connecting to its systems. The LSE, Europe's oldest independent exchange, said taking trade offline was the only way to ensure a fair and orderly market after customers reported the connectivity problems in early trading. The exchange is still looking into the root cause of the embarrassing outage -- the second significant technical problem in just over a year -- and said it was too early to judge the extent of the effect on trade or lost business. Market players were able to continue to place buy and sell orders into the exchange's order book after trading was taken offline at 10:33 a.m. (1033 GMT), but those trades were not executed until trading was resumed at 2 p.m. (1400 GMT). About Financial News USA Financial News USA is a Next Generation Financial Communications firm focused on the distribution of market moving news. Financial News USA has developed leading edge e-publishing tools including programming proprietary RSS feeds and enabling open source press release publishing across its network. Financial News USA has been aggressively expanding its news distribution network by targeting direct feeds to financial news and data providers such as FinancialContent, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), among others. Financial News USA offers a free news feed available online (www.financialnewsusa.com) to websites and financial services looking for content and for individual investors looking to stay informed on the financial markets. Financial News USA and its affiliates charge each client cash for news distribution and may take an equity position in the companies mentioned herein, please visit the disclaimer at www.financialnewsusa.com. 
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