All today’s U.S. data better: here’s fast recap. But Europe worries help rates again.

Quick recap today’s stats (w/charts) on jobs, housing, manufacturing, consumer

Initial Jobless Claims -403,000 for the week ending October 15 -Down 6,000 from previous week’s revised 409,000 (was 404k) -4-week moving average was 403,000, down 6,250 from previous week -While the 4-week average continues to decline, this is not a picture of a healthy jobs market. It appears more as a picture of a jobs [...]

Huge news day with all key data summarized (including charts) in today’s Fundamentals report. Despite rising jobless claims and contracting manufacturing activity, rates are up today for 3 main reasons: (1) Consumer inflation is higher. Rates rise when mortgage bonds sell, and they’re selling today partly because consumer inflation is higher. Inflation makes the future [...]

Consumer Inflation -CPI Month/Month: +0.5% -CPI Year/Year: +3.6% -Core CPI Month/Month (less food & energy): +0.2% -Core CPI Year/Year (less food & energy): +1.8% -This retail inflation is always difficult to explain because while it is most certainly the overall number which affects everyone, it is core which is of interest to economists because core [...]

Initial Jobless Claims -418,000 week ended July 16, the 16th week above 400k -Up 10k from previous week’s revised 408,000 -4-week moving average 421,250 -Down 2,750 from the previous week’s revised average of 424,000 -This is a chart of Initial Jobless Claims since March 2009 -See colored line showing that we got below 400,000 in [...]

Housing: -May Starts 560,000 (annualized), up 3.5% from April, above 540k expected. -May Permits 612,000 (annualized), up 8.7% from April, most in 2011. -We need about 1,500,000 Housing Starts a year to keep pace with population growth and units scrapped to disaster or obsolescence. Jobs: -414,000 for week ended June 11, down 16,000 from previous [...]

After a four week rally that set new 2011 lows, rates are up slightly on net mortgage bond selling since yesterday. Bond yields (or rates) are now back up to the previous 2011 low level set March 16 after the Japanese earthquake and ‘not-a-war’ in Libya reached peak panic levels. Rates drop when bond prices [...]

The nuclear meltdown situation in Japan is no less dire today as helicopters and water cannons are now being used to cool fuel rods and prevent spreading of radioactive material, but after utter market panic yesterday caused stocks and rates to drop, they’ve now reversed course almost entirely (Dow +166, S&P +21, and FNMA 30yr [...]

Rates improved a bit yesterday and gave up ground today, making 30yr fixed rates on loans up to $417k hold at 5%, with higher loan amounts and condo loans about .125% to .25% higher. Rates improved yesterday after Housing Starts fell as expected and Building Permits rose almost 17%, then retreated a bit today after [...]