Friday’s bond market has opened in negative territory after this morning’s economic news failed to motivate buying in bonds. The stock markets are reacting favorably to the news with the Dow up 158 points and the Nasdaq up 43 points. The bond market is currently down 12/32, which will likely push this morning’s mortgage rates higher by approximately .250 of a discount point.
The Labor Department gave us this morning’s key economic data with the release of the almighty monthly Employment report. It revealed that the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.0% last month, exceeding forecasts of remaining at 8.8%. That is good news for the bond market, but a larger than expected increase in the number of jobs added during the month offset that portion of the report. The data showed that 244,000 new jobs were added to the economy last month when analysts were expecting to see only 185,000, which is negative news for long-term securities such as mortgage-related bonds.
It appears that traders were actually expecting to see weaker readings than forecasts were showing. The data itself gives us a mixed measure of employment sector strength, but the fact that weaker number were already built into the markets makes today’s results a disappointment to the bond market. Stock traders are using them as a rallying point, indicating that concerns about the economy may be overblown. Time will tell, but as I suspected, today’s data has hurt mortgage rates much more than it helped them.
I would not be completely surprised to see an afternoon revision to mortgage rates, especially if the major stock indexes move from current levels. If they continue to move higher this morning, we could see an upward revision to mortgage pricing this afternoon.
Next week is also a fairly active one in terms of economic releases. There are a handful of reports scheduled for release that are relevant to mortgage rates in addition to a couple of Treasury auctions. There is nothing of importance scheduled for Monday and the most of the important data comes late in the week.