Today was an odd one for mortgage rates. Anyone who's been following the rate market for very long will tell you that the monthly jobs report is one of the most reliable source of volatility for rates. In general, when job growth is much stronger than expected, rates rise and vice versa. But in today's case, rates managed to hold perfectly flat despite the jobs report absolutely crushing expectations. Understand that no one who is offering a reason for this would have predicted this result if they knew the jobs numbers ahead of time and were simply asked to predict how rates would react. In other words, the only reason you're getting their explanations is because the paradoxical market reaction demanded a different narrative. The only things that were true both before and after the jobs report were as follows: The Fed recently said it was almost exclusively focused on the inflation side of its dual mandate (stable prices + maximum employment). Bonds/rates have been preoccupied taking cues from concerns about the tech sector and heavy selling in tech stocks. Bonds/rates/stocks are still in the process of making sense of this week's election results. Markets have been more interested in the unemployment rate component of the jobs report than the payroll count (it was the latter that really surged in today's data).  None of these bullet points would have fully predicted the paradoxical resilience in rates today, but they perhaps help get us close to wrapping our minds around it. At the end of the day, the average lender was right in line with yesterday's levels--the lowest since September 22nd.  [thirtyyearmortgagerates]

Yesterday, it was a drop below 7.25%. Today, the 7.20% floor was broken. Mortgage rates have been on a tear over the past month and are now back to 7.17% for the average lender. If there's one thing that deserves most of the credit for this bull run, it's the extreme bearishness in tech stocks. The NASDAQ is now down roughly 14% from the October highs and the drop perfectly coincides with the drop in bond yields and interest rates.  The road ahead is fairly simple: if tech continues causing panic in stocks, interest rates can continue to benefit. The caveat is that the benefit to rates has been getting smaller and smaller relative to the drama in stocks. This would also suggest that any miraculous bounce in stocks would likely prompt a similar correction in rates.  Economic data still matters as well. On that note, tomorrow brings the monthly jobs report, which should always be respected as a potential source of volatility. 

30yr fixed rates moved over 7.25% on September 23rd, 2026 and continued to long-term highs of 7.61% by early October. But starting in mid October, rates began declining as the market grew increasingly concerned about the tech sector. Until today 7.27% marked the floor of the present rally. Now the floor is lower. Rates began the day moderately lower with an average top-tier 30yr fixed rate of 7.25%. Reasons can be debated, but may include: Investors coming off the sidelines after mid-term election uncertainty was cleared up Ongoing trouble for the neocloud portion of the tech sector (i.e. Coreweave, Nebius, etc) Another sharp drop in fuel prices  Earlier in the day, it wasn't a given that rates would end up lower. Just after 10am, it looked like the stock market might get so much love that bonds/rates would be left wanting. But tech stocks ended up hitting their ceiling for the day at that time and bonds were subsequently able to improve to their best levels in the afternoon. When bonds improve enough intraday, mortgage lenders occasionally adjust rates lower. Not every lender did so today, but it would enough to bring the average down to 7.22%--the first time we've been below 7.25% since September 22nd.  [thirtyyearmortgagerates]

Well... they can't all be winners. It seems as if rates could do no wrong over the past 3 days with each marking the lowest level in more than a month for the average top tier 30yr fixed rate. Today wasn't a winner, but it wasn't exactly bad. Apart from the past 3 days, today would still have been the lowest rate in more than a month, and it was only 0.03% higher to boot. So what happened? First off, when we're talking about a 0.03% change day-over-day, it's not particularly important to investigate causation because that level of movement falls in the "incidental" category. Nonetheless, there was some obvious motivation this morning in the form of stronger economic data.  Job openings data for the month of September was released today. It was the highest in 4 months and quite a bit higher than expected. All else equal, stronger labor market data tends to put upward pressure on rates. Tech stocks were also modestly higher today, and weakness in the tech sector has been a key factor driving persistently lower rates over the past several weeks. 

It was a perfectly fine day for mortgage rates to start the new week. The underlying bond market improved modestly, drawing on a combination of sharply lower oil prices and another drop in tech-related stocks. While it's true that oil prices haven't had a reliable impact on bonds/rates over the past month, today's drop was big enough that is probably helped to some extent, especially when we consider some headwinds created by updated borrowing estimates released by the U.S. Treasury today. Once per quarter, Treasury updates estimated Treasury auction amounts. Treasuries are the foundation of almost all interest rates in the U.S. When supply increases or demand falls, it puts downward pressure on prices and upward pressure on rates, all else equal. Today's upward pressure was fairly modest, but still noticeable. Mortgage lenders played it fairly safe by setting today's rates perfectly in line with last Friday's. That makes today tied for the lowest 30yr fixed level since September 23rd, 2026.