Posts Tagged ‘GDP’

Market recap for week ending 4/26/2013

Posted on: April 26th, 2013 by Fred Bohman No Comments

At the time I am writing this, mortgage interest rates are less than 1/8th of a percent lower than they were last Friday.

This week was a slow week in terms of important economic reports. Mortgage rates have been stuck in a narrow range for the past 3 weeks with not much change. The 10 year Treasury bond yield has tested the resistance at 1.70% several times but has not managed to close below it. The jobless claims report was released yesterday and claims were down 16k. This report was in line with analyst estimates and thus not much of a market mover.

Today the advanced Q1 Gross Domestic Products (GDP) report came out. The report is an early indicator of what the actual report will look like and is used as tool to measure the growth of our economy. The numbers came in lower than what was expected by analysts, but it did not have much impact on the markets. In order to break out of this narrow range we have been stuck in we will need some big economic news, either positive or negative. Until that time expect rates to stay stable at current levels.

Market recap for week ending 10/26/2012

Posted on: October 26th, 2012 by Fred Bohman No Comments

At the time I am writing this mortgage interest rates are exactly where they were last Friday.

Europe is still grappling with its debt problems after 2 years of trying to solve it. At the moment European leaders seem to be on track to a solution to their debt crisis, but the crisis is not over yet. Germany is still showing resistance to the current plan of buying up bad debt from struggling Euro zone countries.

In the US we had some noteworthy events this week in regards to mortgage interest rates. Yesterday the weekly jobless claims report came out and claims dropped 23k versus the 13k forecasted. Anytime we have better than expected job numbers it is generally bad news for rates, as it shows the economy is on track to a recovery.

Today the third quarter advanced gross domestic product (GDP) report came out. The advanced GDP report is an early report that aims to forecast how the actual report will look like. The GDP report is a measurement of all goods and services produced within the US. The third quarter advance GDP report was slightly better than expected and showed that our economy grew at a pace of 2%. The fact that our economy is growing would generally be bad news for interest rates, but since this was only an advanced report it did not have that big of an impact on rates.