by Calculated Risk on 8/09/2017 06:38:00 PM

From Matthew Graham at Mortgage News Daily: New 2017 Lows for Rates, But There's a Catch

Mortgage rates fell to new lows for the year today, following the North Korea nuclear threat headlines.  In truth, the preceding sentence gives too much credit to geopolitical risk.  Rates were already drifting very close to the lowest levels since the election, even before yesterday's news broke.  Additionally, the improvements are still too small to be translating to NOTE rates themselves (the actual interest rate applied to your loan balance).  Instead, it's the upfront costs that are allowing for fine-tuning adjustments.  (This means the EFFECTIVE rate is changing, but not the NOTE rate.) [30YR FIXED - 4.00%]

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for 241 thousand initial claims, up from 240 thousand the previous week.

• Also at 8:30 AM, The Producer Price Index for July from the BLS. The consensus is a 0.1% increase in PPI, and a 0.2% increase in core PPI.