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Hawkish hints from Fed officials, US home buyers get good news and an exodus at Musk’s Twitter. St Louis Fed President James Bullard upped h [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hawkish hints from Fed officials, US home buyers get good news and an exodus at Musk’s Twitter. Hawkish hints St Louis Fed President James Bullard [upped his view](bbg://news/stories/RLI6JTT0G1KW) of where the Fed rate should be to between 5% and 5.25%, from 4.75% to 5% previously, stressing this is a "minimal" level. Bullard has been one of the more hawkish members of the FOMC and given the direction of policy this year has also been one of the more influential members. However, the Fed might start to face [more resistance]( from a divided Congress, with Democrats warning about job losses, while Republicans continue to stress the importance of price stability. Mortgage update US home buyers got some [rare good news yesterday]( as mortgage rates saw the biggest weekly decline in nearly 41 years. The drop -- which saw the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage fall to 6.61% from 7.08% last week -- reflects a change in Freddie Mac’s methodology that the company says will provide a broader, more accurate view of the mortgage market. Housing could use a boost -- separate data Thursday showed [new home construction continued to decline]( in October as builders contend with a sharp retrenchment in housing demand. Twitter exodus Elon Musk gave [Twitter employees]( an ultimatum to either commit to the company’s new “hardcore” work environment or leave. Many more workers declined to sign on than he expected, potentially putting operations at risk, according to people familiar with the matter. So many employees decided to take severance that it created a cloud of confusion over which people should still have access to company property. Twitter [closed its offices]( until Monday, according to a memo viewed by Bloomberg. Musk’s takeover of Twitter is still facing US government scrutiny over [national-security concerns]( that his foreign partners may be able to access user data, people familiar with the matter said. Session highs US futures [advance](, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 trading at session highs as of 5:45 a.m. New York time. European stocks rally as all sectors rise, led by energy, miners and financial services. The dollar is marginally lower, though still within Thursday’s range. The British pound reclaims $1.19, while the Japanese yen hovers below 140/USD. Treasury 10-year yields outperform comparable German and British bonds by about two to three basis points, to trade around 3.8%. West Texas Intermediate futures trade below $82, while gold and Bitcoin see small gains. Coming up... Existing home sales form the backbone of today's US data, with the October number seen coming in at 4.4m, down from 4.7m before. The leading index is seen coming in at -0.4%. In Canada, the Teranet/National Bank HPI figgure is due, as well as readings on raw material prices. COP27 ends today, and earnings include Gazprom and Rosneft. What we've been reading Here's what caught our eye over the past 24 hours. - Meltdowns are [reshaping crypto](. - JPMorgan gives [new parents]( a break. - [Deglobalization]( might be good for emerging markets. - [Meta]( has a hole in its advertising business. - Oil refineries find paying fines is [cheaper than cleaning up](. - How not to [fire people](. - The property [steal of the century](. And finally, here’s what Katie’s interested in this morning There’s a tectonic shift taking place in the investing world underneath the bond market’s tremors. More than $446 billion has been withdrawn from US fixed-income mutual funds, a record exodus in ICI data. About $154 billion has poured into bond ETFs instead, per the ICI — even as nearly every fund posts a loss. A lot of that comes down to nimbleness: Unlike mutual funds, which price only once per day at the market close, ETFs behave like a stock and can change hands throughout the session — an unrivaled trading advantage when Federal Reserve-induced gyrations rock global markets all day long. “The Fed meets and tells the world at 2 p.m. what they’re going to do,” Sean Collins, chief economist at the Investment Company Institute, said in a phone interview. “With an ETF, you can respond immediately. With a mutual fund, you can respond at 4 o’clock.” However, bond mutual funds still dwarf their exchange-traded counterparts. Even after this year’s record withdrawals, ICI data show that roughly $4.5 trillion sat in old-school bond funds through September versus $1.3 trillion in ETFs. They have a powerful incumbency advantage, too: the US retirement system and 401(k)s are largely built to integrate mutual funds. But the direction of travel is clear. In May, BlackRock Inc. predicted that assets in global bond ETFs will reach $5 trillion by the end of the decade. That was an upgrade to their previous forecast of $2 trillion by the end of 2024 made in July 2020 — a milestone that the asset manager expects will be reached next year. Follow Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld on Twitter [@kgreifeld]( Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Five Things - Americas newsletter. 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