Wednesday’s bond market has opened in positive territory despite unfavorable housing news. Stocks are showing strong gains, pushing the Dow higher by 111 points and the Nasdaq up 55 points. The bond market is currently up 4/32 (1.76%), which should keep this morning’s mortgage rates nearly unchanged from yesterday’s early pricing.
The National Association of Realtors announced late this morning that home resales rose 3.6% last month, exceeding expectations. The number of sales was the strongest since February 2018, indicating growth in the housing sector. That makes the data bad news for bonds and mortgage rates, but the markets don’t seem to be too concerned or happy about the data. Both bonds and stocks were showing gains before the data was posted.
Tomorrow’s only relevant monthly data will be December's Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) at 10:00 AM ET. The Conference Board, who is a New York-based business research group, compiles the data and releases this report. It attempts to predict economic activity over the next several months, but since it is posted by a non-governmental agency it is not considered to be of high importance to the financial and mortgage markets. Tomorrow's release is expected to show a 0.2% decline, meaning the indicators are predicting little growth in economic activity over the next several months. As long as we don't see a noticeable increase, I don't think this data will have much of an influence on mortgage pricing.