Thursday’s bond market has opened in positive territory following mixed economic data and no new major headlines from the Middle East. Stocks are showing gains of 64 points in the Dow and 178 points in the Nasdaq. The bond market is currently up 5/32 (4.55%), which should improve this morning’s mortgage rates slightly if compared to Wednesday’s morning pricing.

Yesterday’s 10-year Treasury Note auction went fairly well with the benchmarks indicating a decent demand for the securities. This was good news for mortgage rates because they are based on long-term securities also. Bonds lost a bit of ground between morning pricing and the 1:00 PM ET results announcement, but rebounded after the auction details were posted. This led to some of the lenders that had issued an intraday rate increase to revise pricing lower. In other words, the auction wasn’t just technically good news for rates, we actually did see a positive reaction in both bond trading and mortgage pricing. This scenario will be repeated today when 30-year Bonds are auctioned this time.

Also released yesterday afternoon were the FOMC minutes from the June 16-17 meeting. They didn’t give us any major surprises. If fact, they didn’t give much information at all compared to previous versions with exception to the obvious that the FOMC committee is widely divided on what the Fed’s next move will be. While they voted unanimously to keep key short-term interest rates unchanged at last month’s meeting, there was much debate about the upcoming meetings. Some feel that oil and Iran war-related inflation would ease, allowing for the next move to be lowering key rates. However, some still believe that a rate hike will be needed to get inflation to start moving lower instead of the current trend of higher. Keep in mind that this meeting took place when there was an agreement in place with Iran. Now that it appears there is no longer a peace deal, it is quite possible that some opinions of a needed rate cut may change to a neutral stance or over to the side that is calling for a rate hike.

The first of this morning’s two economic releases was last week’s unemployment update at 8:30 AM ET. It revealed 215,000 new claims for benefits were filed last week, down a little from the upwardly revised 217,000 initial filings from the previous week. Declining claims are a sign of strength in the employment sector, but this was a minor variance from forecasts and the decline was created by an upward change to the previous week. Accordingly, we are labeling the report neutral for mortgage rates.

The National Association of Realtors released their June Existing Home Sales report at 10:00 AM ET to wrap up this week’s light economic calendar. They said that home resales unexpectedly fell 2.4% last month when analysts were predicting a small increase. A weak housing sector makes broader economic growth more difficult, so the decline in sales is good news for mortgage rates. It just wasn’t enough of a decline to draw a strong reaction to this moderately influential report.

There isn’t anything of relevance scheduled for tomorrow. This should leave the markets to trade mostly on geopolitical news, particularly regarding Iran and the Middle East region. There are fears that the conflict may return to an outright active war again that would drive oil costs back up, fueling inflation concerns. Bonds are very sensitive to inflation trends because rising inflation erodes the value of their future fixed interest payments, causing yields to move higher. This is bad news for mortgage shoppers because rates tend to track bond yields.

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.