The beginning of this week has seen another slight improvement in Mortgage Bond Pricing (which lowers rates). On Friday, a low consumer sentiment reading caused rates to improve in the morning, although they gave back many of those gains in the afternoon. Yesterday, the data was not on our side as Leading Economic Indicators were slightly stronger than expected. However, the stock market's reaction to the data was lackluster which helped us eke out some small improvements yesterday as well. Today

Over the past few weeks, with strength in stocks, and economic reports showing either lower than expected losses or better than expected gains, the market has been operating under the impression that we could slowly pull up from our recessionary nose dive. Today's today refutes that stance and is helping Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS - the bonds that directly govern mortgage rates) to find more buyers. Thus, rates are improving. In fact, we're almost back to where we were a few weeks ago. Manufacturing

This week began in slow fashion as there were next to no scheduled economic reports that affected mortgage rates. When data is in short supply, traders turn to the stock market to get clues about how to invest in MBS. Stocks have had some ups and downs this week, but are generally even with the end of last week. As a result, MBS are even as well. The activity level picks up today with more economic reports already released and set to release. however, these reports have had mixed signals for mortgage