Moderate Job Gains

Moderate Job Gains

The major economic data released this week revealed that the labor market remains tight, supporting the case for additional monetary policy tightening from the Fed. As a result, mortgage rates climbed to the highest levels of the year. The latest key Employment report...
Housing Starts Surge

Housing Starts Surge

With little major economic news, it was a quiet week for mortgage markets, and rates ended nearly unchanged. In semi-annual testimony to Congress this week, Chair Powell suggested that the Fed was near the end of its current monetary policy tightening cycle. After...
Fed Pauses Rate Hikes

Fed Pauses Rate Hikes

Given the release of key economic data and a Fed meeting, not surprisingly it was a volatile week for mortgage markets. The daily movements were roughly offsetting, however, and mortgage rates ended just slightly higher. After rapidly raising the federal funds rate by...
Services Sector Weakens

Services Sector Weakens

For the most part, investors this week were simply passing time ahead of key inflation data and a Fed meeting next week. Although the few economic reports released this week were generally a little weaker than expected, mortgage rates ended slightly higher. The most...
High Inflation

High Inflation

Investors continued to become less concerned about bank troubles and the debt ceiling talks this week. After responding to the initial increase in uncertainty in these areas by shifting to safer assets such as bonds, the opposite took place this week, which was...