Mortgage Rates Undo Any Potential Damage From Last Friday

Thanksgiving week is always an interesting (and frequently frustrating) time for the bond market that underlies day to day interest rate changes.  Markets are traded by humans, even in cases where humans are programing machines to do the trading, and human participation dwindles on certain holiday weeks.

As participation decreases, trading levels can jump around in a more random way as fewer people and fewer dollars constitute a larger percentage of the overall trading environment.  That can lead to volatility in mortgage rates as was the case on Friday for lenders that actually updated rates from Wednesday.

In other words, the bond market pointed to a moderate jump in rates on Friday. There was a good chance the jump was an artificial byproduct of Thanksgiving week, but there was no way to be sure until today. 

Now we're sure. Bonds quickly moved back in line with Wednesday's levels and the average mortgage lender did the same.  That's good news considering last Wednesday's mortgage rates were right in line with the lowest levels of the past 2 months.