Rate Lock Advisory

Thursday, August 20th

Thursday’s bond market has opened in negative territory to reverse a good part of yesterday’s short-lived rally. Stocks are also showing noticeable losses with the Dow down 360 points and the Nasdaq down 190 points. The bond market is currently down 13/32 (4.69%), which should cause an increase of approximately .250 of a discount point in this morning’s mortgage rates.

13/32

Bonds

30 yr - 4.69%

360

Dow

53,102

190

NASDAQ

26,140

Mortgage Rate Trend

Trailing 90 Days - National Average

  • 30 Year Fixed
  • 15 Year Fixed
  • 5/1 ARM

Indexes Affecting Rate Lock

Low

Neutral

Treasury Auctions (5,7,10,20,30 year)

Yesterday’s 20-year Treasury Bond auction was mostly uneventful. The results indicated a below average demand for the securities compared to other recent sales. Ideally, a strong demand from investors would have pushed bond yields lower. However, the fact that the bond market has little reaction to the 1:00 PM ET results announcement allows us to label the event neutral for mortgage rates.

Medium

Positive

FOMC Meeting Minutes

Also released yesterday afternoon were the minutes from the July 28-29th FOMC meeting. There were no major surprises to come from them, but they did show an extended discussion about the potential need to raise key short-term interest rates if inflation doesn’t move towards the Fed’s goal of 2.0% quicker than it has been. The three dissenting votes to keep rates unchanged last month all wanted to raise them by a quarter point, feeling it would prevent the need for more drastic action down the road. One noteworthy point to come from minutes was the fact Chairman Warsh put together a task force to weigh the possibility of reducing the number of FOMC meetings from the current eight per year to just six per year. The theory is that this would allow more economic data to be made available between meetings. Overall, the bond market appeared to react favorably to the release, improving slightly after the minutes were posted at 2:00 PM ET. It wasn’t enough of a move to cause widespread rate revisions, but does allow us to label the minutes as favorable.

Medium

Negative

Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)

The first of this morning’s two moderately important economic releases was last week’s unemployment update at 8:30 AM ET. It revealed only 206,000 new claims for jobless benefits were made last week, down from the previous week’s revised 212,000 initial filings. Analysts were expecting to see a number closer to 210,000. The lower than predicted number of new claims and the fact it was a weekly decline is a sign of strength in the employment sector that makes the report bad news for rates.

Low

Negative

Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) from the Conference Board

Today’s second release came from the Conference Board, who is a business research group and not a governmental agency. They announced at 10:00 AM ET that their Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) for July rose 0.2%. This was a bit higher than the 0.1% that was expected, meaning they are predicting modest economic growth over the next three to six months. Technically, the increase is bad news for bonds, but the variance was minor and this report doesn’t carry a high level of importance. Therefore, the news hasn’t had much of an impact on this morning’s mortgage rates.

Medium

Negative

Geopolitical/Financial Issues

Tomorrow doesn’t have anything that we need to be concerned about. It is a safe bet that oil prices are going to have a heavy influence on bond trading and mortgage pricing. They have steadily risen this week with one major type crossing the $90 per barrel threshold again. This fuels inflation concerns that cause interest in bonds to wane, which is what is likely driving this morning’s bond selling.

Float / Lock Recommendation

If I were considering financing/refinancing a home, I would.... Lock if my closing was taking place within 7 days... Lock if my closing was taking place between 8 and 20 days... Lock if my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days... Float if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now... This is only my opinion of what I would do if I were financing a home. It is only an opinion and cannot be guaranteed to be in the best interest of all/any other borrowers.

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