Jobs week!

We begin the new week with mortgage bonds slightly lower. With stocks drifting lower as well, we could be seeing another day of Fed panic. The increased chatter of an imminent rate hike by Fed members is speaking across the nation and has both the stock and bond markets worried. Combined with the replication of a similar chart pattern from July when rates jumped higher, it seems likely that bond investors will begin to take more conservative positions for a while. If this is in fact the case, we can expect bonds to drift lower as the week progresses. That will push mortgage interest rates higher in the process.

This is Jobs Week, with ADP set to announce their estimate of new job creations in the month of September on Wednesday and the Mac Daddy report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) due on Friday. With the Fed looking for any and all reasons to raise interest rates, the results of this report will be uber significant.  The results of which will likely set the near term direction of mortgage interest rates. If the Job gains were strong, as Unemployment Claims have suggested, we could see mortgage rates deteriorate even more.  If there is a silver lining, it could be that students leaving the Job market as the summer season employment comes to an end could help keep the number down a bit. We will have to wait and see.

With market patterns continuing to look negative, we will maintain our locking bias.