There are strange things going on out there. Revlon filing for bankruptcy. Atlanta’s mayor calling for limits on investors buying homes. Delta Airlines limiting the amount of time you can spend in its lounge eating cubes of cheese and lukewarm chili. Many high earners are living paycheck to paycheck. What isn’t strange, unfortunately, is lenders’ net worth plummeting, and a good indicator of that is the price of publicly held stocks. loanDepot, which had a high of about $22 per share, hit $1.75 yesterday. Guild Holdings was over $17 per share, now near $10. Rocket over $23 per share now in the mid-$6 range. UWM over $13 per share at one point now in the low $3 range. It is the same story for Homepoint, Mr. Cooper, PennyMac, Finance of America… If you had saved up $1 million dollars in your retirement account and bought loanDepot at the high, it would now be worth $79,500. But remember that these stock prices reflect what is happening in the entire industry, so there is no joy in Mudville. Period. As servicing rights are sold, lenders are using up the cash reserves they’ve (hopefully) hoarded from two years of great times and are trying to increase their market share by working on fundamentals for the future. (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by SimpleNexus, an nCino company and award-winning developer of mobile-first technology for the modern mortgage lender. Nexus Closing gives borrowers flexibility and convenience during closing from traditional, to hybrid, to full eClosings.)