Mortgage Rates Unchanged Today, Higher Than Last Week

It was a very boring day for mortgage rates.  There was no meaningful change versus yesterday's latest levels and there were almost no instances of mid-day rate changes in response to market volatility.  Reason being: there wasn't much intraday market volatility, even though there were events capable of moving the needle.

The first potential market movers were the two key economic reports released at 8:30am ET  this morning.  The weekly Jobless Claims data and the Philly Fed business outlook survey were both stronger than expected.  Strong econ data generally pushes rates higher.  Today was no exception but the damage was limited and only made for a temporary bump in bond yields this morning (yields = rates). 

In order to see intraday rate changes from mortgage lenders, bond yields would have to move even more and in a more sustained way.  The absence of movement allowed lenders to keep things unchanged day-over-day, contrary to many of today's news headlines which erroneously reported a drop in rates.

Why so erroneous?  The headlines in question cite today's Freddie Mac rate survey, released every Thursday, but fueled by data that typically measures Monday vs Monday rate changes.  To Freddie's credit, they nailed the Monday vs Monday drop.  It was almost exactly the same as the MND number.  It's just that rates moved up after that and are now slightly higher than they were last week.