Daily Financial News - Mortgage | Real Estate | Stock Market

Dow in Positive Territory For December - CNNMoney.com -- Stocks rallied Monday, pushing the Dow back into positive territory for the month as investors cheered a combination of analyst upgrades and corporate deal-making.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 85 points, or 0.8%. The blue-chip average is now up 0.7% for December. The S&P 500 index rose 11 points, or 1.1%. The Nasdaq composite advanced 26 points, or 1.2%, to its highest level since September 2008.

Dollar Rises With Stocks - CNNMoney.com -- The dollar edged up against major currencies on Monday, following stocks higher after the health care bill passed a key vote in the Senate.

"The movement in equities indicates that the dollar is rising because of the more optimistic outlook people have for the U.S. economy," said Kathy Lien, director of currency research at Global Forex Trading.

Trading is expected to be thin during the holiday week, she said. As a result, the dollar is likely to remain within a predictable range. "The dollar is holding onto its gains," she said. "There's no U.S. economic data on the calendar today, so nothing is really stopping it from rising."

OTS and OCC Report Another Uptick in Mortgage Delinquencies - The Offices of Thrift Supervision (OTC) and Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) reported that banks and thrifts implemented twice as many new home retention actions as foreclosures during the third quarter of 2009.

In spite of the uptick in modifications, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter, much of the data reported in the OCC and OTS Mortgage Metrics Report which covers about 65 percent of the mortgages outstanding in the country, was grim. Current and performing mortgages in the portfolio covered by the report dropped to 87.2 percent compared to 88.6 in the second quarter. This is the sixth consecutive quarter that performance declined. One year earlier, in Q3 2008 91.5 of the portfolio was current and performing. Serious delinquencies rose to 6.2 percent from 5.3 percent in the second quarter and there are 1 million mortgages in foreclosure, about 3.2 percent of the portfolio, an increase of 100,000 during the quarter.

Government guaranteed loans, primarily those obtained through the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration, showed higher delinquency rates than the portfolio as a whole. 8.2 percent of government guaranteed mortgages were delinquent, up from 7.5 percent in the preceding quarter and an additional 2.5 percent were in foreclosure.