Mortgage bond prices opened lower Thursday morning erasing some of the gains seen Wednesday afternoon. Rates are under pressure from strong stocks futures, an indication the DOW Jones index will open higher. In news released this morning, weekly jobless claims stood at 456K. Continuing claims, a summation of all those receiving benefits, fell to 4,462K. Analysts were expecting claims to read 450k and 4,600k respectively. The continuing claims data was better than expected pressuring rates. In other news, the US trade deficit stood at 40.29B. This data was near expectation and had little effect on trade. The headline event today will be the Treasury auction of $13B in 30-year bonds. This is the longest duration offering the Treasury issues and may be met with caution from market participants. We are hopeful this auction goes as well as the 3 and 10-year have earlier this week. While neither auction was great, they were good enough to keep rates low. Results will be released by 1:15 pm ET
Carlos Figueira - Keypoint Mortgage 