Economic data is one of the most basic and reliable inputs for the bond market.  The bond market, in turn, dictates day to day interest rate movement.  In general, weaker economic data pushes rates lower and that was today in a nutshell. Weekly Jobless Claims came in at the highest levels since 2021 and the bond market reacted immediately.  It wasn't a huge move in the bigger picture, but enough to counteract the jump to higher rates seen on Wednesday. Bigger volatility remains a bigger risk surrounding next week's Consumer Price Index data on Tuesday and the Fed Announcement on Wednesday.
In a widely anticipated move, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced its decision to raise interest rates by another quarter point. The Fed decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 5 to 5.
On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Manila Chan and Ted Rall discussed a range of hot topics, including Twitter CEO Elon Musk alleging the social media giant spies on its users an exclusive interview with Fox News.
indices have been in and out of positive territory all day. and let s just take a look at how markets here in asia have been performing. you could see the nikkei s losing about 2/10 of 1% here in hong kong, the hang seng gaining 1.9. gains in the soul. cosby up almost a third of 1% the shanghai composite gaining 6/10 of 1% now on wall street, the delfin more than 500 points on wednesday, and if we could just bring up the live data for you just to get a glimpse of where u. s futures stand at the moment, all green arrows down futures up about half of percent . nasdaq futures gaining almost three quarters of 1% s and p 500 futures of about 6/10 of 1% now let s get more now on the rate hike from cnn s hell, solomon. wednesday s fed announcement concludes perhaps one of the most important fed meetings in recent history. that s because while inflation is still a major concern as of two weeks ago, so was bank instability. federal reserve chair jerome powell
Mortgage rates were refreshingly lower at the beginning of the week with most lenders continuing to improve through Tuesday afternoon.  Much has changed since then.  In fact, the average lender is once again above 7% for top tier conventional 30yr fixed rates.   Contrast that to today's prevailing mortgage rate headline which says something to the effect of "rates fell to 6.66% this week," and you may wonder who's telling the truth. The good news is that no one is lying and, by the time we understand the source of confusion, no one is even trying to mislead you.  As is the case on any Thursday, many of today's mainstream mortgage rate headlines are based on Freddie Mac's weekly rate index.  Many times, that's not a problem.  Other times, the survey's methodology (which Freddie is working on changing) leads to misdirection. Speci