September : 30-Yr Fixed National Average Rate Chart

Last Week's Mortgage Rate Recap

Mortgage backed securities (MBS) gained +20 basis points from Wednesday's close.  Monday's open was 101.72 and Thursday's close was 101.98.  So, pricing has improved a meager 26BPS for the entire week.    Another day under government shut down, another day of trading sideways.    We got our last piece of government data yesterday and Initial Jobless Claims had another good reading.

Initial Weekly Jobless Claims ticked up a mere 1K from the prior week but came in lower than market expectations. 

Normally, any positive jobs data would be negative for your pricing and this reading is positive jobs data.  But this data was largely ignored amidst speculation that these reports will start to stall and even increase as all those furloughed government employees hit the reports.

ISM Servicing came in at a nice reading of 54.4 (a reading above 50 shows expansion and growth).  But the market was expecting a reading of 57.0.  So, this reading was considered weaker than expected and MBS moved upward (good for your pricing) on the news.

But once again our ceiling of resistance won out and MBS were forced to trade within our trading channel for the rest of the day.