RateWatch - Local Boy Makes Good!

Market: As noted last week, rates have been drifting higher, but today has seen a reversal in the bond market and I would expect that we would get some of last week back. We're up about 35 bps, which is geekspeak for "about half of an eighth of a point" when lenders get around to giving it back to us. We've been frozen at this level all morning, so I don't think there's any real news making this push.

Analysis: We had a good-sized selloff in bonds last week, but honestly people, it's not as big a deal as CNN says it is. The MSM always trumpets a move in bonds - either direction - as a Sign of the Apocalypse or a Vision of the Rapture, and you just have to tune that stuff out. If the market moves dramatically, so that we're talking about a move of .25% or more, the big news will be something else, and any move in rates will be drowned in it, except here, because on RateWatch rates are all we care about. Seriously, there's no way Maria Bartiromo is watching the FNMA 4.0 30-year bond for indications of how the latest pirate attack affects your refinancing prospects. That's what I do.

If the talking heads are talking mortgages, that means there isn't any significant news moving things, which almost certainly means that the movement is tiny. Amplified and outsized by newsmedia, but it's a tempest in a teapot.

Tidbit: You can follow me on Twitter now (@chrisjoneslehi), and I got my first big hit today when @alphaconsumer, also known as Kimberly Palmer of US News and World Report, blogged about rates and points and cited yours truly. Kudos to @dellojoio (Enoch Chapman) for turning me on to the possibilities of social media. Utah mortgages may never be the same.