Market Commentary

Updated on May 16, 2024 10:06:03 AM EDT

We had three morning economic releases today, starting with last week’s unemployment update at 8:30 AM ET. It revealed 222,000 new claims for benefits were made, down from the previous week’s revised 232,000. Declining claims are good news for mortgage rates, but the 222,000 was a tad higher than expectations. Because of the good and bad in the number and the fact it is just a weekly snapshot, we are considering the report to be neutral for rates.

Also released early this morning was Aprils Housing Starts report that showed a 5.7% rise in new home groundbreakings. This was a smaller increase than was expected and that was made up mostly of multi-family homes starts such as apartment buildings. New groundbreakings of the more relevant single-family home category actually declined from March’s level. Accordingly, we can label the report slightly favorable for mortgage rates.

Today’s third report was Aprils Industrial Production data at 9:15 AM ET. This report tracks output at U.S. factories, mines and utilities, giving us an idea of manufacturing activity. It revealed no change from March’s output when it was expected to rise 0.2%, allowing us to consider the data good news for bonds and mortgage pricing.

The active week comes to an end tomorrow with just a single piece of data that we will be watching, and it is not known to heavily influence bond trading or mortgage rates. Aprils Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) will be posted at 10:00 AM ET. The Conference Board is expected to announce a 0.3% decline tomorrow. This report attempts to predict economic activity over the next three to six months, meaning that the indicators would be projecting slower economic activity this summer. A larger decline would be considered good news for bonds and mortgage rates.