Yesterday was a great day for mortgage rates and consumers as rates on mortgages dropped over .50% but later in the day they increased giving back some of the gains. This is good for the consumer as it will allow a lot of home owners to refinance into lower rates with lower payments, and it will also encourage consumers to get out and buy a new home. A great way to get our economy going is to get housing going and that is why we have been saying for quite some time the government is doing all they

This week we get the release of many economic reports, even though this is a shortened week due to Thanksgiving. Before we get into the reports, we did get some big news on Sunday in the form of another government bailout of a banking institution. Citigroup will be given $20 billion and $306 billion of their bad debts will be guaranteed by the government. This capital injection will be in the form of the government buying preferred stock in Citigroup. Stock futures are up quite a bit this morning

Mortgage backed securities are rallying this morning on weaker then expected economic data. Here are the numbers - <![endif]> Jobless Claims up 26,000 from last week to 542,000 much higher then expected - <![endif]> The continuing claims number remains at a very high level of 4.01 million - <![endif]> The 4 week moving average moved higher to 506,000 These are some of the highest levels since the early 1980’s and this continues to show a very weak labor market which helps

Today we got the release of inflation data in the form of the producer price index and they came with mixed results. The overall reading was much better then expected at a decline of 2.8% vs estimates of a 1.8% decline. This is a positive for mortgage backed securities. The core reading, which strips out food and energy though came is worse then expected at a .4% increase when economists where expecting only a .1% rise. This is a negative for mbs, thus on the day we are even from yesterdays close

This morning we got the release of the monthly retail sales figures and they were disappointing, but I am sure this isn't a shock to anyone. Economists were expecting a -2.1% drop but the actual number came in at -2.8%. When excluding auto sales,

The mortgage backed security market opened this morning in positive territory. We get no economic reports today but we will have another treasury auction of 10yr notes at 1pm est. The added supply of debt on the market could hinder any significant upside

This week will be slow as far as economic reports. The only relevant reports will be released on Thursday and Friday. Thursday we will get the weekly release of jobless claims which are expected to show 480,000 claims and we also get the balance of trade