Wednesday’s bond market has opened in negative territory following early stock strength. The stock markets are showing noticeable gains with the Dow up 95 points and the Nasdaq up 30 points. The bond market is currently down 7/32, but we still may see a slight improvement in this morning’s rates as a result of strength late yesterday. March’s Goods and Services Trade Balance report was released this morning, revealing a $40.4 billion trade deficit. This nearly pegged forecasts on the nose, meaning it has not influenced this morning’s trading or mortgage pricing.

10-year Treasury Notes will be sold today and could impact bond prices and mortgage rates. The 30-year Bond sale will take place tomorrow. Results of the auctions will be posted at 1:30 PM ET each day. If they are met with a strong demand from investors, we could see bond prices rise enough during afternoon trading to cause downward revisions to mortgage rates. However, lackluster bidding in the sale could lead to higher mortgage pricing those afternoons.

There is no relevant economic data scheduled for release tomorrow, except for weekly unemployment figures from the Labor Department. They are expected to announce that 440,000 new claims for unemployment benefits were filed. It will likely take a much larger or smaller figure for this report to affect mortgage rates tomorrow morning.

The remaining three economic reports will be released Friday morning. This is when we will get April’s Retail Sales data (highly important), April’s Industrial Production (moderately important) and May’s University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment (moderately important).



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... Lock if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now...