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Rate Shock: REITs enter earnings season on their back foot amid a renewed surge in long-term rates, facing a materially different cost-of-capital and financing environment than just three months ago. The rate surge is again stressing highly leveraged borrowers, particularly across private markets. Public REITs are better positioned, but remain exposed through refinancing, tenant credit, and equity valuations. Higher rates have brought an important silver lining: years of expensive capital are finally curbing construction, with shrinking pipelines beginning to support occupancy, rents, and landlord pricing power.
U.S. equities stumbled as AI-bubble concerns overwhelmed otherwise resilient fundamentals, while September inflation ran hot but remained heavily energy-driven, complicating the Fed's path without clearly forcing an October hike. Treasuries rallied sharply despite hotter CPI and PPI, with the 2-Year reversing from 4.95% to 4.71% as dovish Fed signals and risk-off flows pushed October hike odds. Oil reemerged as the key macro pressure point, with WTI surging above $100 as Saudi and Hormuz risks intensified, threatening to reverse recent relief in gasoline and diesel prices.
AGNC Investment (NASDAQ: AGNCO - Get Free Report) and Rithm Property Trust (NYSE: RPT - Get Free Report) are both finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, analyst recommendations, risk, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings and profitability. Institutional and Insider Ownership 58.6% of Rithm
The Fed's recent hawkish pivot sharply increased interest rates, negatively impacting most income sectors. CMT preferreds emerge as a compelling sub-sector, offering potential protection against rising long-term rates. Screening CMT preferreds by reset yield and yield-to-call can help identify attractive opportunities.
You can read all the published reports on inflation, jobs and guess what the Fed will do next. Or you could collect a rich income stream, no matter where interest rates are headed. We choose the latter, and are cash collectors across market conditions.
Pareto upgrades - swapping into strictly superior securities within the same issuer - can materially improve portfolio yield without increasing risk. Repeated Pareto upgrades raised yield on invested capital from 8.53% to 11.33% in under two years, demonstrating powerful compounding effects. Current actionable opportunity: ABR-D preferred offers an 18 basis point yield advantage over ABR-E with identical upside to par and risk profile.
AGNC Investment offers high-yield income via agency-backed mortgage securities, but its common shares face persistent book value erosion. I favor AGNC's Series E preferred, yielding 8.75%, for its superior capital preservation and lower risk of dividend impairment versus the common. Recent quarters show AGNC's asset yield at 4.98% and borrowing costs dropping to 3.79%, driving net interest income to a post-2022 high.
AGNC Investment Corp. (AGNC) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript