Mortgage Bonds sparkled throughout most of last week as rates improved through Thursday.  Friday brought rates back up a bit, but so far this morning, that negativity has failed to gain any momentum.

 There is no relevant economic data scheduled to be released today, so any movements in mortgage rates will come from other forces such as news headlines, supply and demand issues in the bond market, and "buzz" among traders.  As of 11:30AM eastern, we are unchanged from Friday's levels, which, despite the downturn were still quite good through the lens of the last couple weeks, with only mid March being better.

Normally, our advice would be to lock near the top of the market, which historically, Friday morning certainly was.  however, because we are seeing the mortgage bond market "hold on" this morning, it may be to your benefit to float until we have more data.  So to equivocate a bit: today is a great day to lock in the grand scheme of things, but if the economic data is week this weak, rates could improve even more.  In general, your own personal level of bearishness on the economy should be your guide in your decision-making process.  The weaker you think economy will be and the more moderate you think inflation will be, is a stronger sign to float.  If you think that the Dow Jones Average coming down to the 12,700 range is temporary and that we will now begin to pull out of the recession, than you would favor locking.

If you are going to be "playing the market," you can usually get a fairly good idea of the direction of mortgage rates by watching the movements of the 10 year treasury, which are free to the public and can be found on any economic news service, but beware that the true indicator of mortgage rates is the Mortgage Backed Security (mortgage bond).  That is not available to you except through sites such as this.  So an even better gameplan if you are floating, is to check back with this blog (make sure you click over to the professional version if you're looking for price changes) to see if there are any mid-day adjustments to bond pricing that may be affecting mortgage rates.