• Thursday’s mortgage rates should be close to Wednesday’s early pricing, but some lenders may show a modest improvement. The bond market is currently up 6/32 (4.02%).

 • Stocks are mixed with the Dow up 108 points and the Nasdaq down 205 points.

 • Yesterday’s 5-year Treasury Note auction had mixed results with some of the benchmarks pointing to a decent demand from investors and others indicating modestly below average interest compared to other recent sales. Bonds had already improved before the results of the sale were announced at 1:00 PM ET and showed little reaction when they were posted.

 • Unfortunately, those bond gains evaporated during late afternoon trading, preventing an intraday improvement to mortgage rates from many lenders.

 • Last week’s unemployment numbers were posted early this morning, revealing 212,000 new claims for jobless benefits were made. This was an increase from the previous week’s revised 208,000 initial filings, but fell short of the 215,000 that was expected. Rising claims are a sign the employment sector weakened during the week.

 • There is also a 7-year Treasury Note auction happening today. Results from yesterday’s auction don’t help us in predicting what may happen today. We will get the details of the sale at 1:00 PM ET, making this another afternoon event for rates. A strong demand from investors would be considered favorable for mortgage pricing.

 • Tomorrow brings us the most important release of the week and one of the more important reports that the bond market gets each month. January’s Producer Price Index (PPI) will be released at 8:30 AM ET tomorrow, giving us a very important measurement of inflation at the wholesale level of the economy.

 • Forecasts are predicting January’s overall and core PPI readings will both be up 0.3%, while they slowed 0.4% and 0.3% respectively from December on an annual basis. Good news for rates would be smaller monthly increases and larger annual declines.

 • Visit our Daily Commentary page on our site for detailed explanations on current news that is relevant to mortgage rates.

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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.