Best 2 Days For Mortgage Rates Since March Ahead of Jobs Report

The stratification of rate offerings between lenders is very high due to rapid changes over the past few days and weeks.  On average, top tier conventional 30yr fixed rates have fallen more than 3/8ths of a percent since Tuesday afternoon. 

You'd have to go back to the days following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March to find a bigger drop in mortgage rates over a 48 hour time frame.  That is quite something and perhaps even a bit of a puzzler given the underlying data and events driving the current move.

To be fair, we can talk about several important reasons for the rate movement, but suffice it to say that if we had to guess how the underlying events would affect rates without actually getting to see the move in rates, our guess would have been much smaller.

All of that may be at moot point because Friday's jobs report will now serve as a deciding vote on whether the rate rally was/is overdone.  At least it CAN serve as that deciding vote if the numbers come in far enough from forecasts.

The bond market (which dictates rates) has a long history of volatile reactions to certain economic reports and the jobs report is certainly the most reliable in that regard.  Although the unemployment rate is the easiest number in the report to understand from a logical standpoint, it's actually the count of nonfarm payrolls (NFP) that carries the most weight.

Economists expect NFP to come in at 180k.  Sometimes the consensus is very close to reality.  Other times, reality can "beat" or "miss" by 100k or more.  In the case of a big miss (NFP under 100k), it's fair to expect the recent rate rally to hold its ground or go even farther.  In the opposite case (NFP closer to 300k), much of the progress seen over the past 2 days could be wiped out in a matter of minutes.

Of course there are "thread the needle" outcomes in between where rates actually don't move much.  All we can know ahead of time is that the potential for volatility is high.