Mortgage Rates a Little Lower Today

Mortgage rates were lower again today, despite the pressure in the afternoon with the 10yr Treasury closing at 1.76% and MBSs in negative territory.  This was even after the European Central Bank (ECB) avoided sending any scary signals about tapering its asset purchases.  Each time the 10yr makes an attempt to break the barrier, it does increases the importance of that level.

The debate last night is still all that the media is talking about - the polls show Hillary Clinton a winner and most analysts now are calling her the anticipated winner.

Three weeks to go - unless there is some huge surprise that flips sentiment she looks like a winner. One fly though - how many people are embarrassed to outwardly say they will vote for Trump after the scandals that keep on coming? From what I read markets want Clinton. Whoever wins, it will be a mess. There is nothing either candidate is prepared to do to make the hard decisions necessary to keep the US economy from sliding back into recession sometime in the next two years (or less). Both economic plans espoused will not succeed to meet the intended announced goals.

And for history buffs - in 1948 (I was not even born yet) - it was a sure thing that Thomas Dewey would win over Harry Truman that the New York Times printed its newspaper with the headline DEWEY WINS and sent it out to newsstands. Strange things have occurred in the past. The NY Times and the world got it all wrong. Just saying….

Tomorrow there are no economic releases - markets will find something else to trade but we continue to hold that both interest rates and stock markets will continue the drift sideways until the election that is less than three weeks away and the FOMC meeting on Nov 2nd. The Fed will not increase rates but we look for the policy statement to be definitive, not the usual mush that is the standard for the FOMC.

In summary, until we have a bit more of a defined break of the current upward momentum in rates the intelligent move is to lock in.  Specifically for loans with a clear path to close within 15 (and maybe even 30 days), locking should be the only approach.