Mortgage Rates Only Modestly Higher Despite ‘Unfriendly’ Data

Mortgage Rates Only Modestly Higher Despite ‘Unfriendly’ Data

Whatever is bad for the economy is typically good for interest rates .  That's the grim irony for the mortgage market and it's the reason you might find a crowd of rate watchers feeling good about downbeat economic data.  It's not that they are happy about job losses or lower economic performance.  They're just excited to be able to offer their clients lower rates. Today's version of this dynamic was quite the opposite, however.  The economic data was friendly toward the economy, most notably with Retail Sales rising 0.6% versus a median forecast of 0.2%.  As far as rates are concerned, that's unfriendly news.  Bonds (which dictate rates) immediately weakened after the data came out, but thankfully, not as much as we would have expected.  The x factor was a friendly interpretation