• Thursday’s mortgage rates should be lower by approximately .125 of a discount point. If you saw an intraday increase yesterday afternoon without getting a correction by the end of the day, you may see a larger improvement this morning. The bond market is currently up 6/32 (4.14%).

 • Stocks are mixed with the Dow up 187 points and the Nasdaq down 81 points.

 • Yesterday’s 10-year Treasury Note auction didn’t go as well as hoped. The benchmarks indicated a fairly soft demand for the securities compared to other recent sales, meaning investor appetite for long-term debt may be waning a bit. We saw bonds react negatively to the 1:00 PM ET results announcement, but fortunately they recovered those losses before the end of the trading session.

 • Last week’s unemployment update at 8:30 AM ET revealed 227,000 new claims for jobless benefits were filed. This was a little higher than the 222,000 that was expected, but still a decline from the previous week’s revised 232,000 initial claims. The fact that the number of claims came in higher than expected is slightly good news for rates.

 • The National Association of Realtors said late this morning that home resales dropped 8.4% to surprise many analysts. A decline from December was expected due to bad weather across a good part of the country. However, the size of the decline despite a dip in mortgage rates indicates weakness in the housing sector.

 • Results of yesterday’s auction make it difficult for us to be optimistic about today’s 30-year Treasury Bond sale. If the 1:00 PM ET release shows similar results as yesterday, we could see pressure in bonds during afternoon trading that leads to an upward revision in rates.

 • This week’s economic calendar comes to a close early tomorrow morning with the release of the highly influential Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January. It measures inflationary pressures at the consumer level of the economy last month. Both the overall and more important core readings are expected to show an increase of 0.3% last month. The year-over-year readings are expected to decline slightly from December's rate.

 • Good news for bonds and mortgage pricing would be smaller monthly increases that would likely lead to a larger than predicted decline in the annual readings. A slower rate of inflation makes long-term securities, such as mortgage bonds, more attractive to investors and should help contribute to lower mortgage rates.

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

CLICK HERE to view full detailed report and recommendations

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... Lock if my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days... Lock 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.