Mortgage Rate Updates 11-11-09

The bond market is closed today in observance of the Veterans Day holiday. The stock markets are open for trading and are showing gains with the Dow up 71 points and the Nasdaq up 21 points. Since the bond market is closed today, there will likely be no or little change to this morning's mortgage rates even if your lender is open for business.

There is no relevant economic data scheduled for release today. Any government agencies that would post such news are closed for Veterans Day. There are no private sector reports being released either, such as data from the Conference Board, National Association of Realtors or University of Michigan that we regularly see.

Yesterday's key 10-year Treasury Note auction went fairly well. A decent demand is a good way of describing investor interest, but certainly not strong. Some of the components that are used to measure the success of these sales showed sli ghtly better results than the last 10-year sale while others were lower. The results brought little reaction from the bond market and mortgage rates.

The only factual economic data scheduled for release tomorrow are weekly unemployment figures from the Labor Department. They are expected to show that 510,000 new claims for benefits were filed last week. This would be a slight change from the previous week's total, but since this data tracks a only week's worth of new claims it likely will not impact bond trading enough to affect mortgage rates. It will require a wide variance between forecasts and the actual number of new claims to see mortgage rates react to this data.

We also have the 30-year Treasury Bond auction tomorrow. It is considered to be less important to mortgage rates than yesterday's 10-year sale was, but does have the potential to affect mortgage rates. Bond traders will be looking for a strong demand from investors, particularly int ernational buyers. If there is an overwhelmingly strong interest in the sale, bonds may rally after the results are posted at 1:00 PM ET tomorrow. But a weak sale could lead to bond selling and higher mortgage rates tomorrow afternoon.