30-Year Mortgage Rate Slightly Falls While Shorter-Term Rates Rise

According to Freddie Mac's weekly survey, the average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped slightly this week, while rates on other mortgages rose. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.85% for the week ending March 27, down from last week's 5.87% average. The mortgage averaged 6.16% a year ago.

But rates on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, a popular choice for refinancing, rose to 5.34%, from 5.27% last week. Rates on 15-year mortgages were at 5.86% a year ago.

The 5-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) also moved up to 5.67% from last week's average of 5.56%. The five-year ARMs averaged 5.88% at this time last year.

One-year Treasury-indexed ARMs averaged 5.24% this week, up from last week's 5.15%. The ARM averaged 5.43% a year ago.

RevenueShares' ETFs with Revenue-Weighted Stocks

In late February, Paoli, PA-based RevenueShares Investor Services LLC launched its first ETFs on NYSE Arca: RevenueShares Large Cap Fund (RWL), RevenueShares Mid Cap Fund (RWK) and RevenueShares Small Cap Fund (RWJ).

RevenueShares ETFs are ranking companies by revenue as opposed to capital-weighted indexes, which, by definition, buy stocks that are rising and sell stocks that are falling, and thus go against the conventional wisdom of "buy low, sell high" motto. As we reported earlier, such alternative strategies have also been initiated, for example, by WisdomTree Investments which has already carved out a niche for itself with a family of ETFs that weight stocks by earnings and dividends.

RevenueShares weight several existing Standard & Poor's benchmarks by sales. For instance, the RevenueShares Large Cap Fund has different sector weightings than the S&P 500. It is overweight in consumer discretionary and staples, financials and energy, and is light on technology and health-care stocks. Even though earnings in banking and financial stocks have been wiped out the past year on subprime and credit-crunch problems, their revenue have increased, which explains the fund's inclination towards the sector.