Staggeringly Big Rate Swings as Markets Remain Focused on Ukraine

Financial markets were already dealing with rapidly evolving Fed policy shifts, a big jump in rates, and a big drop in stocks. But after Russia invaded Ukraine, volatility has been on another level . As far as the mortgage market is concerned, the average 30yr fixed rate experienced some of its biggest 2-way swings in more than a decade.  The following chart shows the change in rates every 48 hours.  This makes things more interesting because big moves in rates often take more than a day to play out.  That was the case at the start of this week as the combination of Monday and Tuesday brought the biggest 48hr drop in rates since our daily record keeping began in 2009.  The only exception would be March 2020, and there are several good reasons to keep March 2020 out of comparisons.  To make the volatility demonstration even more impressive , by Thursday rates had moved higher at the fastest pace since 2013 (again, excluding March 2020).  In fact, there was little change between Wed and Thu, so the big bounce back actually happened in only one day. This means that prospective borrowers who chatted with loan officers about the recently lower rates on Tuesday were in for an unpleasant surprise less than a day later. Fortunately, things settled down very nicely by the end of the week, but it was a wild ride getting there. How is the Ukraine invasion causing this volatility?
Source: mortgagenewsdaily.comNew feed