EconPlot › Explainers › The 10-year Treasury yield and your mortgage

What actually sets my mortgage rate?

Updated 2026-09-06 · how we source every figure

Your mortgage rate is the ten-year Treasury yield plus a lender's margin

A new thirty-year fixed mortgage rate is assembled from two pieces: the yield on a ten-year US Treasury note, and an additional margin the lender charges above it. Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey commentary routinely explains week-to-week moves in mortgage rates by pointing at the ten-year Treasury yield, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has documented the two series moving together.

A Treasury note is a bond issued by the US Department of the Treasury. When you buy one, you are lending money to the federal government, and the government pays you interest twice a year until the note matures. The ten-year note matures ten years after it is issued. Its yield is the annual interest rate that the note's current market price implies, expressed in percent per year. On September 1, 2026 that yield was 4.79 percent.

The second piece is the margin, and it is not profit alone. It covers what it costs the lender to originate and service the loan, the risk that the borrower stops paying, the risk that the borrower repays early and the lender loses the interest it expected, and a profit.

You can watch the arithmetic on one day. On August 27, 2026, the day the mortgage survey was dated, the ten-year Treasury yield was 4.67 percent and the surveyed thirty-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.66 percent. The difference between them, 1.99 percentage points, is the margin as it stood that week. Note the phrase percentage points, not points: in mortgage paperwork a "point" is a fee charged at closing, which is a different thing entirely.

The ten-year yield is the base price of long-term borrowing across the economy, not just for mortgages

The same yield sits underneath other long-term borrowing, which is why the ten-year yield gets more attention than its name suggests.

Corporate bonds, the loans that companies raise from investors, are conventionally quoted as a spread over Treasury securities of similar maturity. That is the industry's own convention, used by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the trade body for firms that deal in bonds, and written into the published rulebooks of the widely used corporate bond indexes. So a corporate borrower's cost of new debt starts from the Treasury yield and adds a margin for that company's risk, in the same shape as the mortgage calculation above.

The reason a government bond serves as the base is that it is the benchmark alternative. Whoever has money to lend for a decade can lend it to the US government at the published yield. Anyone else asking to borrow for a long term has to offer more than that, and how much more is the margin.

The effect runs both ways. When the yield rises, new borrowing gets more expensive, but the interest paid on newly issued Treasury securities rises by exactly the same definition, because the yield is that interest. A higher yield is a worse deal for someone taking out a new fixed-rate loan and a better one for someone buying a newly issued government bond. A higher yield does not improve the return on a Treasury security someone already owns: that bond's interest payments were fixed when it was issued, and it is the bond's market price that falls instead.

Investors set the ten-year yield, and expectations about the cost of living are one reason it moves

Investors set the ten-year yield by trading the note in the bond market, and one standard reason it moves is what those investors expect the cost of living to do over the coming years. No official announces the yield, and it changes every business day.

The mechanism has three steps. First, a ten-year note pays a fixed number of dollars in interest, set when it was issued. Second, buyers and sellers trade that note at whatever price they agree on. Third, the yield is whatever annual return that price produces given those fixed payments, so price and yield move in opposite directions: pay less for the same fixed payments and the return is higher.

Now add expectations about the cost of living. If investors come to expect that the cost of living will climb faster over the next ten years, the fixed dollars the note pays will buy less when they arrive. Investors will only accept that if they are compensated, so they pay less for the note today, which is the same thing as demanding a higher yield. This compensation for expected increases in the cost of living is one of the standard components of a bond yield as it is quoted — the headline yield, before subtracting what the cost of living is expected to take out of it — in the Federal Reserve's own explanation of why interest rates matter.

The recorded history of the series shows how far the yield can travel. The ten-year yield was 2.66 percent on January 2, 2019. It fell to 0.52 percent on August 4, 2020, the lowest value anywhere in the daily file behind this page, which covers January 2, 2015 to September 1, 2026. It then began 2022 at 1.63 percent on January 3, reached 4.07 percent by November 1, 2022, and peaked at 4.98 percent on October 19, 2023, the highest value in that file. At 4.79 percent on September 1, 2026, the yield sits near the top of that range rather than the bottom.

The Fed can cut its rate while a new mortgage gets more expensive, and that is what happened in late 2024

A cut by the Federal Reserve does not automatically make a new mortgage cheaper, because the rate the Fed controls and the rate your mortgage is priced from are two different rates.

The Federal Reserve's policy instrument is a target range for the federal funds rate, which is the interest rate banks charge each other for lending reserves overnight, that is, for a single day. The Fed does not set Treasury yields and does not set mortgage rates. Even the published federal funds figure is not a number the Fed writes down: the effective federal funds rate is the average rate actually transacted in that overnight market, which sits inside the Fed's target range. The effective federal funds rate was 3.6 percent in August 2026, as a monthly average.

Late 2024 is a worked example of the two rates parting company. The Fed announced the first cut of that cycle on September 18, 2024. Over the following months the effective federal funds rate fell from 5.13 percent as a September 2024 monthly average to 4.48 percent in December 2024, a fall of 0.65 percentage points. Over the same stretch the ten-year Treasury yield rose from 3.70 percent on September 18, 2024 to 4.58 percent on December 31, 2024, a rise of 0.88 percentage points. The surveyed thirty-year mortgage rate rose too, from 6.09 percent on September 19, 2024 to 6.85 percent on December 26, 2024, up 0.76 percentage points.

The surveyed average was therefore higher in December 2024 than in September 2024, three months and one rate cut after the cutting began. This is a description of what the recorded series did in one period, not a claim about what will happen after any future cut. The point the late-2024 episode establishes is narrower and more durable: the link from the overnight rate to the ten-year yield is not mechanical, so a cut in the overnight rate does not guarantee that the ten-year yield, or the rate on a new mortgage, will fall.

The mortgage rate and the ten-year yield track each other closely, but the gap between them is not a constant

Across 1,152 weekly pairs of the two series, beginning on September 24, 1992 and ending with the week to August 27, 2026, the mortgage rate and the ten-year yield move together closely, with a correlation of their levels of 0.949 on a scale where 1.0 would mean lockstep and 0 would mean no relationship at all. The gap between them over those same weeks is not fixed: it has ranged from 1.20 to 3.10 percentage points.

That correlation of 0.949 is the sense in which the mortgage rate tracks the yield: over years, where one goes the other goes.

Week to week the connection is looser. The correlation of the weekly changes in the two rates is 0.772 over the same pairs. So a week in which the yield ticks up is usually but not always a week in which the surveyed mortgage rate ticks up, and the size of the two moves often differs.

The typical gap over those 1,152 weeks was a median 1.72 percentage points. Averaged over whole years, the gap was 2.21 percentage points in 2020, 2.52 percentage points in 2024, and 1.96 percentage points in 2026 so far.

That range, 1.20 to 3.10 percentage points, is the practical limit on the rule of thumb. Someone who takes a forecast of the ten-year yield and adds two percentage points to get a mortgage rate is using an estimate that has historically come out more than a full percentage point too low in some weeks and roughly eight tenths of a percentage point too high in others. On a long-term loan, an error of that size is not a rounding error.

The published mortgage rate is a weekly survey average, and it says nothing about a loan already signed

The 6.66 percent figure is an average of rates on offer, collected in a survey, not a quote issued to any particular borrower.

It comes from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which is published weekly and dated on a Thursday. An individual borrower's quoted rate is negotiated with a particular lender on a particular day, so a quote that differs from the survey number is not evidence that anything is wrong. Comparing a personal quote against the survey is comparing one observation against an average.

The two series also update on different clocks, so figures seen together are usually from different days. The ten-year Treasury yield is published for every business day and genuinely moves daily: it was 4.64 percent on August 25, 2026 and 4.79 percent on September 1, 2026, a swing of 0.15 percentage points inside five business days. The mortgage survey produces one number a week. The effective federal funds rate quoted above is a monthly average.

None of this touches a fixed-rate mortgage that has already been signed. On a thirty-year fixed loan the interest rate was set at closing and does not change afterwards, whatever the yield does. Everything on this page is about the price of new borrowing.

For scale, the mortgage survey stretches back to April 2, 1971. Its lowest recorded weekly average was 2.65 percent on January 7, 2021 and its highest was 18.63 percent on October 9, 1981. A reader whose reference point is 2021 and a reader whose reference point is 1981 will reach opposite verdicts about 6.66 percent, and the series supports neither verdict on its own.

The series behind this page

The same data the video plots, from the same file. Point at the line to read a value off it.

What this page does not establish

• The 6.66 percent figure is a weekly survey average of rates lenders were offering, published on a Thursday, not a quote to a named borrower. A reader who treats that survey average as the rate they are entitled to, and concludes a different quote means a lender is overcharging, is comparing a single negotiated offer against an average of many.
• The close tracking between the ten-year Treasury yield and the thirty-year mortgage rate does not prove the yield causes the mortgage rate. A correlation of 0.949 in levels is consistent with both rates responding to the same expectations about the cost of living, and the correlation of weekly changes is only 0.772, so in any given week the mortgage rate can move by a different amount, or briefly in a different direction, than the yield.
• The gap between the mortgage rate and the yield has ranged from 1.20 to 3.10 percentage points across the 1,152 weekly pairs since September 1992. Anyone converting a ten-year yield into an expected mortgage rate by adding roughly two percentage points can be wrong by more than a full percentage point, which on a thirty-year loan is a large error in the monthly payment.
• The ten-year yield is a daily market price, not a level that holds. It moved from 4.64 percent to 4.79 percent between August 25 and September 1, 2026, so the 4.79 percent figure describes one day, and a reader who cites it weeks later is quoting a stale number rather than a current one.
• The late-2024 episode shows that a Fed cut and a rising mortgage rate can coincide; it does not show that cuts generally raise mortgage rates, and it is one three-month window in one cycle. Reading it as a rule in either direction over-reads a single case.
• The federal funds figure of 3.6 percent for August 2026 is a monthly average of the rate banks actually transacted at overnight, not the target range the Federal Reserve announces. Quoting the 3.6 percent figure as the Fed's decision misstates both what the number is and when it was measured, and no September 2026 monthly value existed when this data was read on September 3, 2026.
• None of these rates change a mortgage already signed at a fixed rate. Everything here describes the price of new borrowing, so a reader watching the yield to see what will happen to an existing fixed loan is watching a number that cannot affect that loan.

Questions people also ask

Sources

The evidence behind every claim above, as recorded when the piece was made.

yield 4 79 sep 1 2026

US Treasury 10-year constant-maturity yield via FRED, series DGS10, local file data/DGS10.csv re-read 2026-09-03: observation 2026-09-01 = 4.8 percent, the last row in the file (2026-08-31 = 4.75 is the row before it). Used in the title, cover, stakes scene, the stamps, the chart badge and the chart narration

hook one number sets what your mortgage costs

Impact statement for the hook: new 30-year fixed mortgage rates are priced off the 10-year Treasury yield plus a spread (Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey commentary; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED Blog on mortgage rates and the 10-year Treasury), so the yield is the base of what a new mortgage costs. 'Sets' is used in the plain sense of 'is the base for'; the bank's margin is named in step two. Car loans were dropped from the script because no local series or named source ties auto-loan pricing to the 10-year yield

treasury is a loan to the government

Definition: a Treasury security is a bond issued by the US Department of the Treasury; the buyer lends money to the federal government and receives interest (TreasuryDirect, 'Treasury Notes': notes pay interest every six months and mature in 2 to 10 years; TreasuryDirect groups notes with bills and bonds as 'Treasury marketable securities'). The 10-year yield is the annual interest rate implied by the 10-year note's market price. The narration glosses 'Treasury' as 'a kind of bond' and 'a ten-year loan to the US government', and 'yield' as 'the interest the government pays'

investors set the yield

Mechanism, textbook-level: Treasury yields are set in the market by what buyers are willing to pay. Buyers demand a higher yield when they expect the cost of living to rise faster, because a fixed interest payment buys less in the future (this is the inflation-compensation component of a nominal yield; Federal Reserve, 'Why do interest rates matter'). Wording note 2026-09-03: the earlier script said 'rising prices', which in a bond video reads as the price of the bond — and a rising bond price means a FALLING yield, the opposite direction. 'Cost of living' is now used instead, and the government-borrowing cause was cut to leave one mechanism in step one.

mortgage priced on the 10 year yield

Mechanism: 30-year fixed mortgage rates are set off the 10-year Treasury yield plus a spread that covers lender costs, credit and prepayment risk and profit; Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey commentary routinely explains mortgage-rate moves by the 10-year Treasury yield, and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 'Mortgage rates and the 10-year Treasury' (FRED Blog) documents the two series moving together. Local files data/DGS10.csv and data/MORTGAGE30US.csv show the same co-movement from 2019 to 2026. The narration says 'on top of that yield, plus their own margin'

mortgage 6 66 late august 2026

Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey 30-year fixed rate via FRED, series MORTGAGE30US, local file data/MORTGAGE30US.csv re-read 2026-09-03: observation 2026-08-27 = 6.7 percent, the last row in the file (2026-08-20 = 6.65 before it); the survey is weekly and dated Thursday, so 'late August 2026' is the plain-words date

nearly two percentage points above the yield

Derived from the two FRED series: 6.66 (MORTGAGE30US, 2026-08-27) minus 4.79 (DGS10, 2026-09-01) = 1.9 percentage points; on the same day as the mortgage survey, 2026-08-27, DGS10 was 4.67 and the gap was 1.99 points. Either way 'nearly two percentage points' holds, and the on-screen stamps show both figures so the viewer can do the subtraction. The narration and headline say 'percentage points', not 'points', so the mortgage-closing meaning of 'points' cannot be heard

fed sets only the one day rate

The Federal Reserve's policy instrument is the target range for the federal funds rate, the overnight rate at which banks lend reserves to each other (Federal Reserve Board, 'Policy Tools: Open Market Operations'). The Fed does not set Treasury yields or mortgage rates. The narration glosses the Fed as 'the US central bank' and the rate as 'the one-day rate', and says the Fed 'steers' that rate because 3.63 is the effective market rate inside the Fed's target range, not a number the Fed writes down

fed rate 3 63 august 2026

Effective federal funds rate via FRED, series FEDFUNDS (monthly average), local file data/FEDFUNDS.csv re-read 2026-09-03: observation 2026-08-01 = 3.6 percent, the last row in the file (2026-07-01 = 3.63 before it; no September row yet). Shown on the stamp 'FED RATE 3.6%'

fed can lower its rate and a new mortgage can still get more expensive

Scenario, not a forecast, and it has happened: local files read 2026-09-03 show the effective federal funds rate (FEDFUNDS) falling from 5.1 percent in September 2024 to 4.5 percent in December 2024 while the 30-year mortgage rate (MORTGAGE30US) rose from 6.1 percent on 2024-09-19 to 6.8 percent on 2024-12-26 and the 10-year yield (DGS10) rose from 3.70 on 2024-09-18 to 4.58 on 2024-12-31. The Fed's first cut of that cycle was announced 2024-09-18 (FOMC statement, federalreserve.gov). The narration uses 'can', not 'will'. All six values re-read from the local files on 2026-09-03: FEDFUNDS 2024-09-01 = 5.13, 2024-12-01 = 4.48; MORTGAGE30US 2024-09-19 = 6.09, 2024-12-26 = 6.85; DGS10 2024-09-18 = 3.70, 2024-12-31 = 4.58. 'More expensive' compares a new mortgage after the cut with one before it, which is what happened in late 2024

chart

US Treasury via FRED, series DGS10, local file data/DGS10.csv; the chart plots the first trading day of each month from January 2019 through September 2026, 93 points, ending on the 2026-09-01 value of 4.79. Daily data is thinned to monthly so year labels can be placed; no value is altered

yield down in 2020

Same series DGS10, re-read 2026-09-03: 2.66 on 2019-01-02, 1.88 on 2020-01-02, then 0.62 on 2020-04-01 and a low of 0.52 on 2020-08-04, the lowest value in the file; the first-of-month values through 2020 stay below 1 percent from April onward

yield up sharply from 2022

Same series DGS10, re-read 2026-09-03: 1.63 on 2022-01-03 rising to 4.07 on 2022-11-01 and a high of 4.98 on 2023-10-19, the highest value in the file; 'sharply' rests on the yield roughly tripling in under two years, the fastest rise in the 2019 to 2026 window; nothing later in the file exceeds 4.98

higher yield raises borrowing costs

Mechanism, textbook-level and consistent with the mortgage entry above: a higher 10-year yield raises the base that new fixed-rate mortgages and corporate bonds are priced from (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED Blog on mortgage rates and Treasuries; corporate bond yields are quoted as a spread over Treasuries, per SIFMA and ICE BofA index methodology). The narration limits the claim to new borrowing, 'a new mortgage and company loans', and no longer mentions car loans, for which no source was on file

savers earn more on new treasuries

Mechanism: a higher yield on newly issued Treasuries is, by definition, more interest paid to whoever buys them (TreasuryDirect, 'Treasury Notes'). The narration says 'new Treasuries', the word glossed in scene 3 as 'a kind of bond', because existing Treasuries do not pay more; their price falls instead. This is explanation of the two-sided effect, not advice to buy bonds

wallet link

Explanation only: the ending describes who pays more and who earns more when the yield rises; no advice on borrowing, buying Treasuries, or timing anything

dates carry a year

September 1, 2026 is stated in the first scene; August 2026 and September 2026 are repeated with the year in later scenes; the chart narration anchors 2019, 2020 and 2022 explicitly

punchline and length

Owner rule 2026-09-03 ('we aim for memorable and not for completeness'): the video ends on 'the Fed can cut and your next mortgage can still get more expensive' and every scene after it was cut. Narration 953 -> 767 characters (74s -> 60s at the measured 12.9 chars/second). No claim was added; cut scenes only removed material.

number discipline

Owner rules 2026-09-03 (at most three numbers, none repeated, at most two significant digits, first slide provokes, last slide is the punch line). Numbers kept: 10-year yield 4.8% (scene 1), mortgage 6.7% (scene 5), Fed rate 3.6% (scene 7, the ending). Dropped the repeated 4.8% in the closing scene and the 'nearly two points' gap figure.

cover headline length

Owner catches 2026-09-03: cover headlines were being cut off where they ran under the artwork. The Cover component now sizes the headline to the band above the image, and the headlines themselves were cut to one provoking line.

cover is one line

Owner, 2026-09-03: 'we just need catchy top phrases... nobody can read [the rest] in a fast scrolling environment, so just remove them'. The cover is the headline plus the artwork; the stamps and the bottom kicker bar are no longer rendered at all.

two model review

Fixed 2026-09-03 from findings that BOTH reviewers (Claude and DeepSeek, run separately by scripts/validate_script.py) raised on the same line. 'demand more' dropped its object.

house accent

Accent set to the channel yellow #f2b705 used by the rest of the queue (was #2f6fed); the accent colours the chart line, the badge and the stamp, so an odd one out reads as a different channel while scrolling.

doccard retired

Owner, 2026-09-03: 'why we need doc card? when we already have another card like this'. The doccard scene type rendered a headline on a bare paper card with no artwork at all, which is newscard minus the picture; it was the only text-only type in the renderer and every project had unused card art sitting beside it. DocCard was deleted from remotion/src/MarketShort.tsx and these scenes are newscard now. NewsCard took over its two extras: the kicker renders above the headline, and a highlight that is a whole sentence not lifted from the headline renders as a caption bar over the artwork instead of painting headline words yellow. Not one word of narration or on-screen text changed, so the script fingerprint and its validation still stand.

mortgage tracks ten year measured

Owner rule 2026-09-05: the central claim must be backed by data the viewer can check. The claim 'one number sets what your mortgage costs' previously rested on a single-line chart of the ten-year yield, which cannot show a relationship between two things. The chart now draws both series on one axis. Measured on FRED DGS10 and MORTGAGE30US, 1,152 weekly pairs 1992-09-24 to 2026-09-03: correlation of levels 0.949, correlation of weekly changes 0.772, and the mortgage rate sits a median 1.72 points above the ten-year (range 1.20 to 3.10). Annual means: 2020 0.91/3.12 gap 2.21; 2022 2.93/5.32 gap 2.39; 2024 4.20/6.71 gap 2.52; 2026 4.40/6.37 gap 1.96. 'About two points' is that gap over the years the chart shows, and a viewer can read it off the two lines. The Fed funds figure (3.6 percent) was dropped from scene 8 to stay inside the three-number cap; the sentence makes the same point without it.

announced two steps bond

validations/announced-structure.md: 'Step one' began an unannounced count. Scene 3 now ends 'Your mortgage rate is built on it in two steps.', naming what is counted and how many, in the narration, before the first item.

sentence caption removed

Owner, 2026-09-05, on the staged drafts: 'the label ... should be removed. Way too many words and too little time to read ... they look like a caption, and is redundant with the caption almost. can we just please remove this type of text.' The caption bar was added on 2026-09-03 so the retired doccard's second sentence had somewhere to live; that was the wrong instinct. A short already burns in word-by-word captions, so a second block of prose over the artwork competes with the text the viewer is reading, in a scene lasting a few seconds. Removed from the renderer and from these scenes: scene 3: Cost of living up, yield up.

chart axes labelled

validations/chart-axes.md, owner catch 2026-09-05: 'why is there no x-axis and no y-axis labels? add, and add a validation rule. x and y must be clearly labeled.' The renderer drew gridlines with no values on them at all, so every chart in the library showed a shape rather than a measurement - a viewer could not tell a two-point move from a two-hundred-point one. ChartLine now writes the value at the top, quarters and bottom of the plot from yMin/yMax, with a unit from the new yUnit field, and takes an optional xLabel for the horizontal axis. A second defect surfaced with it: xTicks are generated on year changes, so a series that never crosses a year boundary produced NO horizontal labels - which is exactly what happened to the 2026-only jobs chart. build_video.py now falls back to month names in that case.

on screen text swept

validations/on-screen-brevity.md sweep, 2026-09-05. The dominant defect was one habit, not many: the headline restating the scene's own narration, so the card read aloud what the burned-in captions were already spelling out. A headline should be the label a viewer can take in at a glance, saying the angle rather than the sentence. Also fixed here: highlights that appear nowhere in their headline (they paint nothing and are dead text), kickers over ~20 characters, stamps repeating a figure the headline and narration already carry, and headlines of three sentences. Scene 3's headline was 68 characters and its stamp repeated the same clause; scene 6 told 6.7% three times. Scene 8's headline was the narration verbatim and is now the point of the scene rather than its transcript.

yellow belongs to type

Owner, 2026-09-06: 'Pull the yellow prompt.' Every image prompt asked for 'one marker-yellow highlight strip'. In black and white that strip WAS the accent and it worked; in colour the generator started using yellow as a compositional block, so the artwork's yellow competed with the yellow our typography uses to point at a word — two things claiming the same signal on one frame. Yellow now belongs to the type alone. The collage keeps its torn-paper colour blocks, which no longer include a deliberate yellow marker.

house style 2026 09 06

Applied the house changes settled on the egg-prices and costco pilots: image prompts moved from newspaper halftone black and white to full-colour magazine collage (saturation 41 -> 84, colourfulness 48 -> 74, against Economics Explained's 91 / 54); no marker-yellow in any prompt, so yellow belongs to the typography alone; and scenes after the stakes card carry the narration captions plus at most one stamp holding a figure, which is what the field's inner slides actually do. The colour-era prompt constraints - pin real colours, state how people are framed, state relative scale - are enforced by validations/scene-artwork.md and repaired by the heal loop below.

no marks in artwork

Owner, 2026-09-06: 'costco card usually have costco on it. is it a fair use?' Naming a company in the narration is ordinary editorial use and this channel depends on it; rendering its mark is a different act, and a generated mark is always a wrong mark - an approximation that misrepresents the logo rather than reporting on it, on top of platform brand complaints that are decided without adjudicating anything. The Costco card was already specified as 'a plain white plastic membership card'. The real exposure was incidental branding nobody had thought of as a brand shot: supermarket shelves, storefronts, packaged goods, and a container port whose boxes carry shipping-line marks. 42 of 63 prompts in the library lacked the clause; every image and video prompt now ends 'no text, no logos, no brand names'.

no elided objects

Owner, 2026-09-06: '"so the fed can cut, ... expensive". fed can cut what? can we not abbreviate?' Two elisions in one sentence. 'The Fed can cut' is a transitive verb with its object dropped, and 'Investors set the ten-year' drops the noun after the adjective. A trader supplies both without noticing; a viewer with no finance background - the audience this channel is written for - has to guess, and the sentence is the video's payoff. Now 'cut its rate' and 'the ten-year yield'. Same family as the earlier 'cooler is not cheaper' catch: the script keeps eliding the noun that carries the meaning. No figure changed.

silent outro card

Owner, 2026-09-06: 'Can we add a call to action slide at the end ... for users to follow my econplot videos to understand what moves your wallet.' Implemented as the one shape this channel's own rules allow. validations/punchline.md: 'A silent end card (no words) after the punch line is allowed - it is a held frame, not more video', so the punch line still lands last in the NARRATION and nothing follows it aloud. validations/editorial-register.md bans comment-bait specifically ('comment X and I'll send you', 'link in bio for') and says a plain editorial ending is fine - a channel name and what the channel is about is neither bait nor financial advice, which is what STRATEGY.md's 'no call to action' was written to exclude. validations/scene-artwork.md permits shared artwork for 'a channel-level element (a logo, an outro card)', so one card serves every video rather than each generating its own. The line is topic-tied where the topic earns it - 'what moves your mortgage' on the bond video - and the house line otherwise. 1.8 seconds, no narration, no audio.

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