New York, January 11, 2026, 07:20 EST — Market closed.
- AGNC ended Friday up nearly 2%, tracking a housing and REIT rally tied to U.S. mortgage-bond buying plans.
- The Trump administration ordered $200 billion of mortgage-backed securities purchases via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- Investors now watch for execution details, plus Tuesday’s U.S. inflation data that could reset rate bets.
AGNC Investment Corp (AGNC.O) shares rose nearly 2% on Friday and closed at $11.41, with about 38.5 million shares changing hands. U.S. markets are shut on Sunday and reopen on Monday.
The move matters for AGNC because it is an agency mortgage REIT: it owns agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), bonds built from pools of home loans with government backing, and funds them largely with short-term borrowing. When the market reprices mortgage bonds higher, it can lift a REIT’s “book value” — the net value of assets minus liabilities — and change what investors will pay for the stock.
Friday’s bid had a clear trigger. President Donald Trump ordered $200 billion of mortgage bond purchases to try to pull down mortgage rates, and the Philadelphia Housing index jumped 4.8% while the MSCI U.S. REIT index rose 0.6%, a Reuters report showed. TD Cowen called the move “not a surprise,” saying it could narrow the gap between the 30-year mortgage rate and the 10-year Treasury yield, and Annex Wealth Management’s Brian Jacobsen said, “Every little bit will help push mortgage yields lower,” while warning it could also stoke demand. (Reuters)
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the program as an offset to the Federal Reserve’s steady pullback from housing markets. “The Fed has about $15 billion of roll-off every month,” he told Reuters, referring to the central bank letting MBS run off its portfolio; the idea, he said, is to “roughly match” that pace. (Reuters)
Mortgage-rate gauges moved fast after the announcement. The 30-year mortgage rate fell on Friday to near 6%, its lowest level since early 2023, according to Mortgage News Daily cited by Investopedia. The same report put the U.S. mortgage-bond market at roughly $11 trillion and noted it was unclear how much a $200 billion bid would change pricing on its own. (Investopedia)
Mortgage REITs were not alone. Invesco Mortgage Capital (IVR.N) gained 1.55% on Friday, while PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust (PMT.N) rose 2.51% and MFA Financial (MFA.N) added 1.25%, according to MarketWatch’s tally of the group. (MarketWatch)
For AGNC, the near-term question is whether tighter spreads hold. In plain terms, the firm borrows short and buys long-dated mortgage bonds; it tries to hedge rate swings, but the business is still built on leverage and small shifts in bond prices.
There’s a second layer, too. Lower mortgage rates can lift the price of mortgage bonds, but they can also speed up prepayments if borrowers refinance, which forces reinvestment into lower-yielding paper. That can pinch returns even when markets are “doing the right thing” in the headlines.
The other uncertainty sits in Washington. Analysts have warned that using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a policy tool complicates any path to privatization; TD Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg wrote Trump’s comments “do not sound like a President who is in a rush to IPO the enterprises,” and JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke said, “If the GSEs can serve as a funding arm for Presidential policy, we shouldn’t ever expect them to be re-privatized again.” (Reuters)
The next hard datapoint for rates comes Tuesday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release December 2025 CPI at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and mortgage REITs tend to trade with rate expectations even when their company news is quiet. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Beyond that, investors have the Federal Reserve’s January 27–28 policy meeting on the calendar, another focal point for funding costs and the yield curve that mortgage REITs live on. (Federal Reserve)
