Rate Update July 9, 2009

Mortgage rates are lower by about .125% this morning after mortgage-backed bonds rallied yesterday afternoon.  In the last month mortgage rates have now decreased by approximately .75%.

Yesterday after the close of the stock market aluminum maker Alcoa (AA) kicked off the 2nd quarter earnings season.  As expected their current earnings were soft.  But, they were not as soft as some analysts had expected.  Over the course of the next couple weeks mortgage rates will likely take lead from the stock market.  Click this link to read how the stock market impacts mortgage rates.

As I explained in yesterday’s ‘rate update’ I believe that stocks in the financial industry will be especially scrutinized during this earnings season.  Here are the dates that the most important financial companies will report:

Goldman Sachs- July 14
JP Morgan Chase- July 16
Bank of America- July 17
Wells Fargo- July 22

With mortgage rates lower by .75% over the past month we begin to get concerned about rates reversing and moving higher.  We are going to shift our focus to a locking bias.  There is probably more to lose than gain at this point.

Current Outlook: bias towards locking