Mortgage Market Update

Well, it’s Monday and time to take a look at what’s happening in the markets today.   A couple of thoughts:

• The markets are kind of “on hold” this morning as there is very little economic news hitting the table today.
• There are a large number of economic reports coming out later this week that it will probably be a very volatile week this week.
• In addition to that, there are a lot of earnings reports coming out this week.   Many of them will be very insightful into how the economy is looking.

So what’s on tap in terms of economic reports?   Here’s a day by day blow of what we can expect and how it might impact the mortgage market:

• Tuesday - Producer Price Index (showing us how much inflation is or isn’t an issue) and Business inventories (an insightful glance at how businesses are doing)
• Wednesday - Consumer Price Index (inflation on the consumer level), Industrial production and Manufacturing (how busy are factories?) and Capacity Utilization (what percentage of factories are being used).  Oh and in addition, we’ll get the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee minutes from the last meeting.
• Thursday - Weekly jobless claims and the Philly Fed Business index (two reports that aren’t market movers)
• Friday - Housing Starts and building permits.

What do I expect this week will bring?

• A mixed bag of economic news.   Not too good but not too bad either.
• A very volatile bond market with rates all over the place.
• The end result will probably be slightly higher rates than we have right now.

Recommendations - lock all loans.   The impending volatility has a greater chance of pushing rates up than it does pushing them down.