Market activity picking up as data becomes available ahead of next week's FED meeting

Investors prepare for busy week as more data becomes available after government shutdown.

Happy Friday from Local Mortgage!

It’s been a more of an eventful week in the bond markets, as the flow of key economic data has slowly become available. No major surprises in this week’s news but markets inched back up just a bit. We are still hanging on to 5.875% for our very best 30 year fixed conventional scenario. 

The week started with both a stock and bond market selloff as weakness in the Japanese bond market spread globally but bond markets bounced back mid-week with an overall weaker than expected ISM service report alongside ADP’s estimate for November jobs falling short of expectations. However, jobless claims were lower than expected so we there were a little bit of mixed signals regarding the labor markets.

Friday morning brought the delayed core PCE report from September, which rose 0.2% from August but the markets largely ignored this report due to its staleness. 

As we expected, trading activity was heavier this week and that trend should continue as we move into next week, with more recent data becoming available. We are expected to get labor market data from the JOLTS report on Tuesday and inflation data from the Producer Price Index on Thursday, but the headliner news next week will come from Wednesday’s FED meeting, where most investors are now expecting another 25-basis point rate cut.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and thank you for reading.