As of yesterday afternoon, mortgage rates were right in line with the highest levels in more than a month. The upward momentum was largely a product of 2 specific days: the October 29th Fed announcement and yesterday's duo of economic reports that suggested less cause for concern over the labor market and strength of the services sector. Now today, we have different economic data telling a different story.  Were it not for the government shutdown, the market may have never placed nearly as much emphasis on today's data. In fact, today is the first time that many market participants have even heard of one of the reports (a synthetic jobs report by Revelio). Revelio's data suggested a decline in payrolls in October.  Combined with separate data that showed a surge in job cuts, there was a clearly negative message for the labor market. Bad economic news helps bonds which, in turn, is good for rates. All told, today's move completely erased yesterday's damage. The average mortgage lender made it almost all the way back down to last Friday's levels. [thirtyyearmortgagerates]

A common recent refrain is that the bond market (which dictates interest rates) is having to make do without many of the most important regularly-scheduled economic reports due to the government shutdown. While this means rates must "fly blind" on many of the days that would normally coincide with these government economic reports, there are other days that still play host to top-tier non-government data. Today boasted not one--but two such reports. Unfortunately for rates, both reports were unfriendly. Rates tend to benefit from economic weakness. As such, when reports are stronger than expected, it pushes rates higher, all else equal. Today's reports were both stronger. ADP's monthly employment tally came in at 42k versus a median forecast of 25k. This isn't an especially large margin of victory, but it was enough to cause weakness in bonds earlier this morning.  Less than 2 hours later, the most widely-followed report on the health of the services sector also showed stronger-than-expected results. Bonds continued to weaken after that, ultimately forcing lenders to raise rates back to levels just under those seen in late September.   If things had been even a little bit worse, we'd be at the highest rates in just over 2 months.  As it stands, we're close enough. MND's 30yr fixed index rose to 6.37% today.  September 25th's level was 6.39, and that's as high as we've been since September 4th. In the bigger picture, rates are still much closer to 2025's lows as opposed to the highs, but there's been a palpable shift since the Fed meeting at the end of October. [thirtyyearmortgagerates]

The average top tier 30yr fixed mortgage rate was technically 0.01% higher than yesterday, but that's the smallest possible detected move.  It's just as fair to say rates held steady today. While it's always nice to avoid a more serious rate spike on any given day, by holding flat, rates are remaining in line with their highest levels in just over 3 weeks.  The bonds that underlie mortgage rates improved slightly throughout the day, but not enough for most mortgage lenders to go to the trouble of adjusting their published rates. The implication is that rates have a bit of an advantage heading into tomorrow. Specifically, if bonds were to hold perfectly steady between now and the time that lenders publish their initial rates, the average lender would likely be slightly lower. How likely is it that bonds hold steady? There's never any way to know for sure. What we do know is that an important economic report will be released right around the time that most lenders are setting rates. As such, the outcome of that report stands a good chance of setting the tone.  The report in question is the ISM Services index and it will be released at 10am ET.

Up until last week's Fed announcement, the average 30yr fixed mortgage rate was at the lowest levels in more than a year (in many cases, matching the same lows seen on September 16th--the day before the previous Fed announcement). Although these past 2 post-Fed episodes have resulted in somewhat volatile bounces, rates are still far closer to long-term lows than they are to the summertime highs. In terms of MND's 30yr fixed index, we're currently at 6.34% versus last week's low of 6.13%.  Contrast that to rates just under 7% in June and 7.25% earlier this year.

After hitting the highest level in several weeks on Thursday, mortgage rates managed to move moderately lower on Friday. Counterpoint: Friday's rates are still the 2nd highest of the past 2 weeks and still meaningfully higher than last Friday's (6.28% vs 6.19% in terms of MND's rate index). The improvement makes it clear that lenders were setting rates defensively on Thursday. We know this because the level of improvement in rates is greater than that suggested by the underlying bond market. In other words, Thursday's rates had a bit of a cushion and lenders removed that cushion on Friday. Another caveat is that Friday's bond market movement argued for a mid-day adjustment toward higher rates, but it wasn't sharp enough for the average lender to go to the trouble of changing rates. In these scenarios, we can safely assume that if bonds are unchanged by Monday morning, most lenders will be offering slightly higher rates.   This is a big "if," of course. There's never any way to know exactly what bonds will do in the future, but all things being equal, there's a slight disadvantage that would need to be overcome if rates are to hold steady or improve.