Mortgage Rates Improve - But Not Much

Mortgage rates recovered slightly today, after hitting the highest levels in nearly 5 months yesterday.  Unfortunately, that leaves today's rates with the dubious distinction of "2nd highest in nearly 5 months."  It continues to be the case that banks will not be eager to offer major improvements on rate sheets, even if underlying bond markets improve.  (Sounds like gas prices to me)

This afternoon at 1:00 pm FBI director Comey sent a letter to Congressional leaders that he had some new evidence involving Hillary Clinton that the FBI is now investigating. Some minor market volatility but nothing significant. No hard news, just media speculation running at light speed. Eleven days prior to the election, this election will be written about for generations, a real dumpster fire. All speculation now - why now did Comey come out with this and how important it is? I will not speculate but this weekend is going to be rapid fire comments and speculations from the media sources and both political parties spinning away. The FBI investigation over Hillary Clinton’s e-mails ended with comments from Comey that there illegalities but not prosecutable. Now with his letter to Congress Comey must come out quickly with details with facts - 11 days to show time. Presently a number of us have more questions than a trivia night at the bar. His comments: “The FBI cannot yet assess whether this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work.”

At the end of the day mortgage prices are unchanged, the 10yr note yield unchanged at 1.85%. The bond and stock market exhibited some initial volatility when the news hit but it did not amount to much and markets settled back to consider the FOMC meeting next week, the October employment data and what to make from the Q3 advance GDP report this morning. Next week is packed with key data.

In summary, with the news regarding the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use, I might lean toward floating on Monday as I did not lock anyone this afternoon with new applications that came in.  Banks are going to be slow giving back any of these recent gains today, but if you monitor the key indexes are stay close to your lender, you might see some fees cut to make it better.  Just do not get caught and get too greedy!