Rates Started Lower, But Rose Unexpectedly This Afternoon

First thing’s first: we deal in extremely granular terms when it comes to mortgage rate movement here.  If you’re just looking for an idea of how today’s rates are versus yesterday’s, they’re lower.  The headline is a reference to intraday reprices–the practice of changing rates for better or worse during the business day in response to changes in market conditions.  Reprices are common.  We rarely see a day without at least a few of them.  Today didn’t set any records in that regard, but the average lender ended the day with slightly higher rates versus the morning’s initial offerings.  The afternoon reprices were counterintuitive considering the day’s big event: the release of July’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) at 8:30am ET.  As far as scheduled reports are concerned, few have had more market moving potential than CPI over the last few months.   That’s because CPI is the more timely of the 2 main inflation indices in the US and inflation has been a big deal for rates in 2022.   The upward pressure on rates was counterintuitive because CPI showed inflation coming in distinctly lower than expected and much lower than last month both for the overall index and the “core” (which excludes more volatile food and energy prices).  Notably, the headline increase for July was 0.0% versus +1.3% in June! If you were a bond trader or rate watcher who had to bet on how bonds/rates would react to such a report, you’d need a really good reason to bet on anything other than rates moving lower.  Indeed, that’s exactly what happened in the immediate wake of the data this morning.  Treasury yields dropped and mortgage-backed bonds surged (that’s a good thing for mortgage rates).
Source: mortgagenewsdaily.comNew feed