Mortgage rates moved higher today, bringing them up to yet another 9-month high. Underlying bond markets ended the week in roughly the same shape as last week, but the mortgage bond market has been volatile over the past 3 days.  That volatility makes it more expensive for lenders to guarantee any given rate, thus accounting for the new highs this week.

Mortgage rates are in trouble.  This will come as no surprise to regular readers.  For the past few weeks, rates made several successive runs up to the highest levels in more than 9 months.  It was really only the spring of 2017 that stood in the way of rates being the highest since early 2014.  After Friday marked another "highest in 9 months" day, it would only have taken a moderate movement to break into the "3+ year" territory.  The move ended up being even bigger.

Mortgage rates continued just slightly higher today.  While it wasn't the worst day they've had in terms of movement, it arrives as rates were already pushing the highest levels in more than 3 years.  In that sense, it's like a few nerve-racking moments in the dark on some scary amusement park ride.  You know it's probably not over and that there are probably scarier moments to come.  Even if the scariest moments are behind you, that won't become apparent until you're officially off the ride.  Within the scope of that analogy, mortgage rates are still very much strapped in.

Mortgage rates managed to hold steady today, on average (some lenders were slightly better while others were slightly worse) despite a more upbeat economic assessment from The Federal Reserve.  The Fed releases a statement on monetary policy 8 times a year.  These statements let markets know what the Fed is thinking and how it is planning on approaching policy in the future.  They also serve as venues to announce changes in the Fed's policy rate, the "Fed Funds Rate," which has a bearing on almost all other rates (including mortgages).  The Fed wasn't expected to hike rates with today's statement, and this wasn't one of the 4 meetings a year where they release updated forecasts.

Mortgage rates are in big trouble.  Whatever you've read about the current spike so far today, you'll probably need to double it after today's bond market movement.  Why?  Because most news stories on rates haven't yet accounted for today's bond market movement!  The most prevalent source material is Freddie Mac's weekly survey which generally tracks lender quotes from Monday and Tuesday of any given week.  The survey showed a 0.07% jump week over week. 

If you thought yesterday was bad for mortgage rates, you're probably not going to be a big fan of today either.  And since today is the end of a week, we could similarly say you won't like this week if you didn't like the previous example.  That's been true all year so far.  And hey!  Those week's add up to a month (we'll give yesterday and today a pass and consider them to be in the first month of 2018) so we can also say if you didn't like the last month of 2017, you're really going to hate the first month of 2018.