• Thursday’s mortgage rates should be higher by approximately .250 of a discount point. The bond market is currently down 8/32 (4.13%).

 • Stocks are mixed with the Dow down 433 points and the Nasdaq up 8 points.

 • Yesterday’s afternoon release of the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book report gave us mixed results from the last update. Sor starters, it showed seven of the Fed’s twelve regions reported modest economic growth while the remaining five said activity was flat or declined.

 • Nine of the regions said that businesses in their area reported they were passing tariff-related price increases onto consumers, which is causing consumers to be more hesitant to spend. A majority of the regions reported stable employment since the previous update.

 • None of the Beige Book points came as a big surprise, so we saw little reaction in bonds to the 2:00 PM ET release.

 • The first of this morning’s two economic releases was last week’s unemployment figures at 8:30 AM ET that revealed 213,000 new claims for jobless benefits were made.  This was unchanged from the previous week’s revised number that was revised upward by 1,000. Since forecasts called for 215,000 new filings, the data is technically slightly bad news for rates even though we have not seen much reaction to the news.

 • Also posted early this morning was Employee Productivity and Costs data for the 4th quarter. It showed that worker output rose at a 2.8% annual pace during the final three months of the year. This was a softer pace than the revised 3rd quarter rate of 5.2%, but stronger than the 1.9% that was expected. A stronger productivity rate is good news for bonds because it allows for economic growth with less fear of inflation.

 • A secondary reading in the productivity data that tracks labor costs came in stronger than expected. This secondary reading is bad news and causes us to label the report slightly negative for rates.

 • The week’s calendar closes tomorrow with two major economic releases, both set to be posted at 8:30 AM ET. One is February’s governmental Employment report that gives us broad insight into the labor market, such as the U.S. unemployment rate, number of new jobs added or lost and the average hourly earnings change.

 • The current consensus is for the unemployment rate to have held at January’s 4.3% and approximately 59,000 new jobs added to the economy while monthly earnings rose 0.3%. Stronger than expected numbers will likely fuel more selling in bonds that would cause a sizable upward revision to mortgage rates.

 • Next will be the release of January's Retail Sales report. This data is very important to the financial markets because it measures consumer spending and that category makes up over two-thirds of the U.S. economy. Analysts are expecting to see a 0.3% decline in sales, meaning consumers spent less in January than in December. Good news for rates would be a larger decline in spending.

  • 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... Lock 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.