Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Dynex Capital Investor Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. I would like to now hand the conference over to your speaker today, Alison Griffin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our market update call. Joining me on the call today, I have Byron Boston, President and Chief Executive Officer Smriti Poponow, Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer as well as Steve Benedetti, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, we wish to remind you that this conference call may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words believe, expect, forecast, anticipate, estimate, project, plan and similar expressions such as the amount, timing and funding of future dividends identify forward looking statements that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified.
The company's actual results, timing of certain events and the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak and the Federal Reserve's reaction to it on The U. S. Financial markets could differ considerably from those projected and or contemplated by those forward looking statements as a result of unforeseen external factors or risks. For additional information on these factors or risks, we refer you to the annual report on Form 10 ks for the period ending December 3139 as filed with the SEC. The document may be found on the Dynex website under Investor Center as well as on the SEC's website.
Call is being broadcast live over the Internet through a webcast link on the homepage of our website, which will be available for replay for ninety days. I now have the pleasure of turning the call over to our CEO, Byron Boston.
Thank you, Allison. I hope all of you and your families are safe and healthy. Those of us on the call today are all joining the call remotely as our company has tech taken all of the recommended measures to protect our employees while maintaining our business operations with a little disruption as possible. As an early adopter of working in a virtual environment, we believe our people, processes, and technology are all well positioned to handle the challenges posed by operating during this pandemic. Our goal today is to provide an update for all of our stakeholders, including our shareholders, our creditors, and our counterparties who have a vested interest in Dynex Capital.
I will make a few statements about the company followed by our current thinking on the market, and I'll ask Murphy Pompano, our chief investment officer, to share with you some specific details about our portfolio. At Dynex Capital, we continue to operate with a long term vision that we believe has helped to prepare us for the current environment. Many of you will recall that for multiple years, we have discussed our concerns regarding intensifying global risk and that as a result, surprises were highly probable. In recognition of the fragility of the global financial system and in anticipation of the potential for a major market correction, we repositioned our portfolio up in liquidity and up in credit. Importantly, we did not have lower rated credit sensitive assets financed with mark to market facilities, which we believe contributed to the margin calls and liquidity issues faced by others in our industry.
In addition, we increased our liquid assets, both cash and unencumbered agency MBS that we held on our balance sheet. We finished 2019 with a substantial level of liquidity relative to our risk profile, and we maintained a substantial level of liquidity throughout the month of March. Our approach assumed the crisis was possible. We did not predict this catalyst, but we were prepared for market disruption. The board has approved reestablishing our common share repurchase approval at $40,000,000 and added a pretax repurchase approval for a preferred stock repurchase approval for an additional 40,000,000.
We believe this demonstrates a strong commitment to protecting shareholder value. Now March 2020 will always be a historic month in the global capital markets. The main driver was a global liquidation of all asset classes and a movement to cash. The world reacted in fear to a major exogenous shock. Considering what has taken place, our long term macroeconomic opinions have not changed.
The global economy is fragile and is supported by central banks and an enormous amount of debt and remains vulnerable. Our short term views, however, have been impacted by a health crisis, economic crisis, and a host of new policy risks that have been introduced to support the global economy. We have positioned ourselves to evaluate the market environment over the next four weeks. At the end of this week, we anticipate our leverage will be around three and a half to four times total equity, and our liquidity, we will be approximately 275,000,000 absent any major market moves between now and then. We are in position to think clearly about what the best risk might be to assume given the massive changes that have occurred over the past six weeks.
With that, I'm gonna turn it over to Smriti.
Thanks, Byron. I'm going to focus my comments on three time periods, a review of how we were positioned as we described on our March 16 conference call, actions we took between March 16 and March 31, and actions we have taken since quarter end. As we described on March 16, we entered this environment with a long duration position, which allowed us the flexibility to make controlled tactical decisions as events unfolded. In early March, we sold 1,800,000,000.0 in thirty year fixed rate agency pools. These were formerly low pay up securities that over time through seasoning and due to the lower rate environment commanded a much higher pay up to TBA versus the time of purchase.
We felt it prudent to monetize this premium protecting capital and book value heading into an environment of greater prepayment uncertainty. Our liquidity position as of March 13 was approximately $200,000,000 The reduced leverage from nine times at year end to seven times as we entered this environment increased our flexibility for the turbulent two weeks ahead. During the two week period between March 16 and March 31, we experienced and managed through a period of unprecedented volatility in the financial markets. Between March 16 and March 18, a two day period, the ten year treasury yield rose 48 basis points from 0.72% to 1.2% and subsequently rallied 52 basis points in the next eight days closing the quarter at 0.67%. Yields made a round trip of 100 basis points in a span of twelve trading days.
Major liquid markets, treasuries, futures, MBS stopped functioning due to the imbalance created by the rush for cash. Agency RMBS spreads moved to levels wider than seen in 2008 and agency CMBS spreads were quoted wider than agency RMBS. During the twelve days between March 16 and March 31, our focus was on managing liquidity and preserving capital. Margin calls, which were made as a result of spread widening on Agency RMBS, Agency CMBS, Agency CMBS IOs, and non Agency CMBS IOs in our portfolio were all met on a timely basis without exception. At no point during the two weeks did our liquidity fall below $80,000,000 We methodically executed a shift out of most of our existing pay fixed swap positions into treasury futures and options for price transparency, trading liquidity, as well as more favorable margin requirements.
We also took profits on put options positions as rates rose and volatility spiked. No sales of assets were made under duress during this time to meet margin calls. As a result of the economic stress due to the COVID-nineteen pandemic, we assessed a greater risk of cash flow disruption in premium agency CMBS dust. We made a deliberate decision to begin monetizing gains, which our long duration position made possible. Beginning March 27 through April 9, we reduced our agency CMBS position by $1,300,000,000 90% of these sales were made post quarter end at a substantial gain versus carrying cost through broker dealers and placed with end investors.
The net results of our actions in the first and second quarter to date are as follows. We expect that first quarter core earnings will exceed the $0.45 dividend declared and paid. We estimate that quarter end book value is between $16 and $16.2 as of 03/31/2020, a decline of approximately 10% versus year end book value of $18.1 Spread widening is a major factor in these results. As a result of our post quarter end activity, our leverage to total capital is down from seven times since our last update to approximately four times as of April 9. Our investment portfolio balance on April 9 stands at approximately $2,300,000,000 down from $5,600,000,000 at year end and now consists of approximately $1,200,000,000 in Agency CMBS DUS and CMBS IOs, 900,000,000 in thirty year agency fixed RMBS pools and a net TBA short position of $515,000,000 Our liquidity position as of April 9 was about $230,000,000 and as Byron indicated, is expected to grow by an additional 40,000,000 to $50,000,000 as recent sales settle.
As of April 9, we estimate book value to be essentially flat versus where we ended the quarter. Our position today allows us to be opportunistic in capital deployment across both sides of our balance sheet as well as a variety of asset classes. The current investment environment is once again being dominated by government policy and central bank actions. Lower repo rates due to the Fed's reduction of the Fed funds rate are supportive of levered returns. Asset opportunities are bifurcated between areas that the Fed supports and those that are currently not supported.
We believe we can find existing opportunities in sectors that the Fed is currently supporting through large scale asset purchases as well as new opportunities in areas that remain underserved. The demographics behind housing continue to support our investment thesis of investing in high quality U. S.-based housing with the key focus now being what risk we want to take on in the current environment. As we evaluate the various investment alternatives, the attendant risks and returns using our disciplined approach, our focus remains on generating solid cash flows and preserving capital. I'll now turn it back to Byron.
Thanks, Smriti. The current crisis remains for now a health and economic one. The Federal Reserve has provided support to the markets in an attempt to prevent this from becoming a financial crisis. What is clear today is the economic toll will be very heavy, including on the real estate finance markets. The risk for policy mistakes is very high.
We have already seen the impact of policy decisions on asset pricing. Those assets that are being supported by the Fed have stabilized. Those that have not continue to suffer from lack of liquidity. The slow pace of regulatory help in the mortgage finance arena, including, for example, the lack of support for credit risk transfer, securities, and mortgage servicing, may have long term impacts on the availability and cost of homeownership in the future. Though we do not own these assets, as a participant in the real estate finance markets, we are concerned about the liquidity of these instruments and are working closely with our industry partners to advocate for policy changes.
Dynex has always believed in a diversified business model. We have a thirty year track record of managing mortgage finance assets and the related risk and returns through business cycles and high volatility market events. Our prudent capital and risk management, along with our relationships, have been the keys to our success in navigating environment like the ones we face today. We have a strong balance sheet, deep relationships, and an experienced and committed team to navigate the company through this challenging environment. To summarize, we feel we are in good position today with flexibility, liquidity, and capital to deploy.
It is important to note that given the level of uncertainty around the environment, we are taking a balanced approach to the future so that we're prepared to manage our business in a variety of scenarios. We see opportunities to invest capital today, but we are going to take some time to evaluate the best risk and return respecting the environment. As of today, the smaller investment portfolio results in low lower earnings on a run rate basis. We will have more commentary concerning investment opportunity and our earnings outlook in our first quarter conference call in a couple of weeks. Now in closing, let me direct a few comments to our stakeholders, to our shareholders.
All of us here at Dynex, we're all coinvestors. We're aligned, and we're all working diligently to preserve the value that we have created for shareholders over the years. To our creditors, we wanna thank you for being an important part of our business and for standing by us during a historical moment the global capital markets. And to all of our stakeholders, I want you to understand how proud I am of the team here at Dynex. You should feel comfortable as the world was confronted with the surprising events during March.
This team jailed, locked arms, and went to work intensely to minimize harm to our stakeholders and to maintain a long term vision of generating solid cash flow through multiple market environments. We anticipate announcing our first quarter twenty twenty results and hosting a conference call on May 6 and look forward to speaking with you then. Stay safe and thank you very, very much for joining us this morning. Operator, that's the end of the call. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.