High unemployment has driven interest rates to record lows, boosting the profit spreads for mortgage REITs. Particularly for REITs, there's a flip side to unemployment. The Fed has been working to reduce borrowing costs and speed up the recovery through a series of efforts – most recently, "QE 3." An example of companies targeting these efforts would be Annaly Capital (NLY 0.15%), Chimera (CIM 0.69%) and Invesco (IVR +1.36%), just to name a few.
