By James Brooks

The bond market is currently up 8/32, but due to weakness in bonds late Friday, we will likely see little change in this morning's mortgage rates if comparing to Friday's morning pricing.

The Commerce Department posted two months of Factory Orders data late this morning. They announced that new orders for durable and non-durable goods at U.S. factories fell 0.1% in August and rose 1.7% in September. August's decline was weaker than expected but September's increase was very close to forecasts, indicating no major surprises in the manufacturing sector. Since this data is only moderately important, these results have had little impact on this morning's bond trading and mortgage rates.

There is nothing of relevance scheduled for release tomorrow in terms of economic data. The rest of the week has six more reports scheduled to be posted that have the potential or likelihood of affecting mortgage rates. The most important data is scheduled later in the week, but we should still see some movement in pricing between now and then. Worth noting is an abundance of speeches from Fed members scheduled this week, many of which are due to take place during afternoon hours and have topics that include economic growth and monetary policy. That significantly raises the possibility that we will get intra-day revisions to mortgage rates multiple days.

Overall, Thursday starts the big news for the week with the preliminary reading of the 3rd Quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to be followed by October's Employment report Friday morning. Tomorrow appears to be the best candidate for lightest day with nothing scheduled, but we should still be alert every day for unexpected news or swings in trading that could cause mortgage rates to jump and proceed cautiously if still floating an interest rate and closing in the near future.

If I were considering financing/refinancing a home, I would.... Lock if my closing was taking place within 7 days... Lock if my closing was taking place between 8 and 20 days... Lock if my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days... Lock if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now.