point improvement

Daily Rate Lock Recommendation – 06/06/2008 11:44:00 AM EST

Friday’s bond market has opened in positive territory following the release of interesting employment numbers. The stock markets are reacting negatively to the news with the Dow down 247 points and the Nasdaq down 43 points. The bond market is currently up 17/32, but we will likely see only a .125 of a discount point improvement in this morning’s mortgage rates due to weakness in bonds late yesterday.

The Labor Department gave us this week’s most important data early this morning with the release of May’s Employment numbers. The biggest surprise of the data was a 0.5% jump in the unemployment rate to bring it to 5.5%. This was the largest monthly increase in approximately 22 years, indicating that the employment sector is much weaker than thought. This is very good news for the bond market.

Also considered a positive for bonds was the loss of 49,000 payrolls. Analysts were expecting to see a loss of 60,000 jobs, but this was the fifth consecuti ve monthly decline in payrolls. That note seems to be more important than the 11,000 job variance between the actual and forecasted numbers.

In a bit of negative news, average hourly earnings rose 0.3% during the month, exceeding forecasts of a 0.2% rise. This means that wages rose more than expected, which raises concerns about wage-inflation that can easily spread to other sectors of the economy. Fortunately, the headline unemployment number seems to be the focus of trading this morning.

Next week brings us the release of a couple of important pieces of data. There is no relevant news scheduled for release Monday. Most of the important data will be posted the latter part of the week. Look for more details on next week’s events in Sunday’s weekly preview.

If I were considering financing/refinancing a home, I would…. Lock if my closing was taking place within 7 days… Lock if my closing was taking place between 8 and 20 days… Lock i f my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days… Lock if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now… This is only my opinion of what I would do if I were financing a home. It is only an opinion and cannot be guaranteed to be in the best interest of all/any other borrowers.