Ok, so Fed Chairman Bernake said that the Feds will be leaving the Fed Funds Rate alone until the unemployment situation starts to improve. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be ready to happen anytime soon. And unlike his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, there is infinitely more openness about what the Feds will be doing with the rate. This kind of takes out all the fun of trying to guess what the Federal Reserve is up to.
But, we still have the bond market to concern ourselves with, and because mortgage rates move with the ten-year bond rates (symbol ^TNX), it's definitely worth our time to watch the direction the bond market moves. As investors become more confident about the market, they can stomach a bit more risk, hence a move out of the safe and loving arms of U.S. Treasuries and into other investments. The reduced demand effectively causes treasury rates to move higher. As of this writing, the ten-year is creeping upward towards a 52 week high. Take a look at the Yahoo Finance chart for TNX, you will see where we are headed.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5ETNX#chart1:symbol=^tnx;range=1y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined
You might want to purchase some video games for your mortgage department - if rate go too much higher, refinances might dry up and they'll have nothing to do all day.
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