Tuesday’s bond market has opened slightly in positive territory following mixed trading in stocks and no surprises in this week’s only significant economic news. The stock markets are relatively calm with the Dow up 6 points and the Nasdaq down 3 points. The bond market is currently up 2/32, which should improve this morning’s mortgage rates by approximately .125 of a discount point.
The Conference Board posted their Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) for December late this morning, showing a reading of 52.9. This nearly matched forecasts and indicates that consumer sentiment about their own financial situations was close to where analysts had thought. That can be considered favorable for mortgage rates with the recent negative tone in the bond market. The lack of a higher than expected reading brings somewhat of a sigh of relief following the downward move in bonds over the past two weeks.
Today also brings us the first of two important Treasury auctions on this week’s calendar. 5-year Treasury Notes will be sold today while 7-year Notes will be auctioned tomorrow. Yesterday’s 2-year Note sale, that was less important to mortgage rates than today’s and tomorrow’s sales will be, did not get an overly strong interest from investors. That raises concern that the other two sales may also generate a lackluster demand. If that is the case, we may see further weakness in bonds before the year-end and possibly upward revisions to mortgage rates. If we happen to get good results in the sales, particularly tomorrow’s more important 7-year Note sale, bond prices should move higher and mortgage rates move lower. Results of each auction will be posted at 1:00 PM ET each day, so the potential for afternoon revisions to rates is fairly high today and tomorrow.
There is no relevant economic news scheduled for release tomorrow except for weekly unemployment figures. The Labor Department is expected to announce that 460,000 new claims for benefits were filed last week. This would be an increase from the previous week, but unless we see a large variance I don’t think this data will have much of an impact on mortgage rates.
The bond market will close at 2:00 PM ET Thursday and all of the U.S. financial markets will be closed Friday in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday. They will reopen for regular hours next Monday morning.
If I were considering financing/refinancing a home, I would.... Float if my closing was taking place within 7 days... Float if my closing was taking place between 8 and 20 days... Float if my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days... Float if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now...