Mortgage Headlines
Mortgage Rates Manage to Edge Off Slightly
A pullback in crude oil prices and a still-strong dollar helped allay inflation fears on Monday, giving prices of U.S. Treasury securities a boost from technically oversold conditions. Yields, which move in the opposite direction of prices, managed to edge off from recent peaks, allowing rates on key mortgage products to ease very slightly as well.
A spotty slate of economic data after last week's fairly full schedule also gave traders some much-needed time to digest the market's recent moves that saw Treasury yields and mortgage rates rise to some of their highest levels in months. Some watchers also said the market was overdone on the downside price-wise and was ripe for a session of corrective technical buying.
Crude oil's retreat to below $60 a barrel, which returned it to levels seen before Hurricane Katrina's oil price runup, further defused worries that runaway energy prices would give the Federal Reserve more reason to pull up an even-tighter rein on monetary policy to combat energy-induced inflation spikes.
The market appeared to gloss over news that the Federal Reserve said consumer credit in September slipped $0.1 billion versus forecasts for a $5.8-billion increase.
Stocks Advance Again
The erosion in crude oil prices helped ignite a renewed advance on Wall Street on Monday in many issues, lifting key stock indexes back toward early-October levels. Transportation, cyclicals and bank and financial shares gained the most ground on Monday.
Among individual movers on Monday were AutoZone shares, which rose $1.61 or 1.87 percent to $87.65 on a Barron's report that hedge fund investor Edward Lampert bought 680,000 shares of the company after it hit its 52-week low. On Nov. 1, Lampert's fund raised its stake in the auto parts distributor to 28.75%, according to an SEC filing.
Guidant shares lost $1.40 or 2.38 percent to $57.52 as it continued to negotiate with Johnson & Johnson over its acquisition. And Genzyme stock fell $3.22 or 4.30 percent to $71.60 after a brokerage downgrade.
At 4:00 p.m. EST:
The Dow 30 Industrial Index rose 55.47 points (0.53 percent) to 10,586.23; the Nasdaq Composite index gained 8.81 point (0.41 percent) to 2,178.24, and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 2.67 points (0.22 percent) to end at 1,222.81.
The 30-year Treasury bond was up 16/32 in price with the yield slipping to 4.82 percent from 4.85 percent on Friday.
The 10-year Treasury note gained 7/32 in price with the yield dipping to 4.63 percent from 4.66 percent on Friday.
The 5-year Treasury note was up 3/32 in price with the yield edging off to 4.54 percent from 4.56 percent on Friday.
At 4:00 p.m. EST, AVERAGE mortgage rates (zero discount points) based on rates collected nationwide were:
The 30-year Conventional Fixed-Rate Mortgage was at 6.095 percent versus 6.105 percent on Friday.
The 15-year Conventional Fixed-Rate Mortgage was at 5.661 percent from 5.666 percent on Friday.
Coming Up:
This week sports a brief set of economic data before Friday's government and bond-market Veterans Day holiday. On Thursday, the September U.S. trade balance is expected to reveal a trade shortfall that gaped to $61.0 billion.
After Monday's slight easing in yields and rates, mortgage lenders overnight might see little reason to alter rates on most mortgage products, given the dearth of fresh market-moving data.
Laura Jacobs
ljacobs@interest.com
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