Updated on March 20, 2025 10:22:06 AM EDT
Last week’s unemployment update started this morning’s activities at 8:30 AM ET. It showed 223,000 new claims for jobless benefits were filed last week. This was an increase from the previous week’s revised 221,000 initial filings but lower than forecasts of 225,000. The increase includes a small portion of the fired federal employees as those claims start to show in these numbers. Rising claims are considered favorable news for bonds and mortgage rates. However, because the number was lower than expectations, we have to label it neutral to slightly negative for mortgage pricing.
Next up was Februarys Existing Home Sales report at 10:00 AM ET. The National Association of Realtors announced a 4.2% rise in sales of previously owned homes, surprising many analysts. Forecasts had sales to be softer than January’s level. As a sign of strength in the housing sector, this report is bad news for bonds also.
Closing out this week’s economic calendar was the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) at 10:00 AM ET. They said the indicators fell 0.3% for February, meaning they are predicting slower economic activity over the next several months. This was good news since analysts were expecting to see a 0.2% decline. There wasn’t much of a variance from predictions, especially considering this is only a moderately relevant report. Still, when the other two morning releases gave us unfavorable results, any type of good news is welcomed.
There is no relevant economic news set for release tomorrow. Since the FOMC meeting is now behind us, so is the Fed’s mandatory quiet period for members. Those individual speaking engagements start tomorrow with one at 9:15 AM ET by New York Fed President John Williams. President Trump is providing a prerecorded speech at 10:40 AM ET for presentation at a digital asset conference. These may be the only events for the markets to trade on, unless something else unexpected transpires.
©Mortgage Commentary 2025