Friday’s bond market has opened in negative territory even though this morning’s sole relevant economic report gave us favorable results. Stocks are fairly calm but mixed with the Dow up 36 points and the Nasdaq down 19 points. The bond market is currently down 5/32 (4.39%), which with yesterday’s late selling should push this morning’s mortgage rates higher by approximately .250 of a discount point. If you saw an intraday increase yesterday, you should see a smaller rise this morning.

April’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) report was posted at 10:00 AM ET this morning. It showed a 0.6% decline, meaning the indicators are predicting moderately weaker economic activity over the next few months. Since analysts were expecting to see a 0.3% decline, we can consider this to be good news for bonds and mortgage rates. However, this report doesn’t carry a high level of importance in the markets, so the news was not able to erase the overnight weakness in bonds.

Next week has a small number of economic reports scheduled for release starting midweek. The majority of them are housing related and aren’t expected to cause a strong reaction in the markets. We will also get the minutes from the April 31-May 1 FOMC meeting Wednesday afternoon. Furthermore, there are also quite a few Fed-member speaking appearances taking place, including a couple that have very sensitive topics related to the outlook of our economy. While there is no data set for Monday, one of those Fed speeches is scheduled for late morning. Fed Chairman Powell is giving a commencement speech Sunday, but we shouldn’t be too worried about it affecting Monday’s trading. Look for details on all of next week’s activities in Sunday evening’s weekly preview.

If I were considering financing/refinancing a home, I would.... Lock if my closing was taking place within 7 days... Lock if my closing was taking place between 8 and 20 days... Float if my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days... Float if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now... This is only my opinion of what I would do if I were financing a home. It is only an opinion and cannot be guaranteed to be in the best interest of all/any other borrowers.