Mortgage Rates at Highest Levels in Seven Weeks

Mortgage rates rose at a slightly gentler pace today, but that's little consolation considering that any move higher increasingly pushes into the highest levels in 7 weeks.  Not unusual the day prior to an employment report, markets were generally marking time. Tomorrow morning at 7:30AM will set of another scrum in markets, no matter the data itself we can expect volatility for a few hours.

Job growth so far in 2015 is about 25% lower than in 2014 according the data reported so far this year. Just to keep things boiling, today Dennis Lockhart, Atlanta Fed out stirring the pot a little. He thinks he can make a case for the Fed to move now but further ‘adjustments’ as he called them will be very gradual. He expects to see a subsiding of the risks that appropriately led to a policy hold in September and October. He thinks the case for liftoff will continue to firm up. Just reporting, take it or leave it, your call.

The NFIB out today with their monthly report from small businesses. The report is lengthy and detailed but this is the headline: “Respondents reported job creation came to a halt in October, with owners adding a net 0.0 workers per firm in recent months. Twelve percent (down 1 point) reported increasing employment an average of 3.6 workers per firm while 10 percent (up 2 points) reported reducing employment an average of 3.5 workers per firm. Fifty-five percent reported hiring or trying to hire (up 2 points), but 48 percent (87 percent of those hiring or trying to hire) reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.  Fourteen percent reported using temporary workers, unchanged. Twenty-seven percent of all owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current period, unchanged from September.  This is a solid reading and suggests no significant change in the unemployment rate."

In summary, rates trickled up further today, as markets prepared for tomorrow's NFP jobs report.  Some Fed speakers did little to assuage those fearing a December rate hike, it would take calamitous data tomorrow to delay the Fed.  Rates may be getting close to leveling off, but I do not want to see what a robust jobs report will do to them.  It is always risky to float through the Non Farm Payrolls report.    Only float if you can afford to be wrong.