Forecast for the Week  

It will be a quiet week when it comes to economic reports, but with the healthcare debate heating up in Washington and the Fed’s Mortgage Backed Securities Purchase program winding down, there are still plenty of events that could impact the markets and home loan rates.

On the economic report front, Thursday brings another Initial Jobless Claims Report. Last week’s Initial Jobless Claims met expectations, but the big news was that the report showed 5.7M people claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits, which was an increase of over 207,000 from the prior week. 

On tap for Friday is the Retail Sales Report, and as the most-timely indicator of broad consumer spending patterns, it is important to see how the numbers come in. In fact, last week’s Personal Consumption Expenditure report revealed that during January, consumers made less, saved less and spent more - but it remains to be seen if the increase in spending will show up in the Retail Sales Data.

Remember: Weak economic news normally causes money to flow out of Stocks and into Bonds, helping Bonds and home loan rates improve, while strong economic news normally has the opposite result.

As you can see in the chart, Bonds made some improvements during the week, but the gains were capped by a rally in Stocks and positive economic data. I’ll be watching closely as always during the coming week - and please feel free to contact me anytime to learn more, or discuss your own financial and home loan situation.

 Patrick Dunn, Westwood Mortgage Inc. & MMG Weekly
patrick@westwoodmortgage.com / http://www.certifiedplanning.com

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Monday Mortgage Update, Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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