9/1/09

Good morning. The market moved around quite a bit yesterday and finally settled late afternoon with a very slight improvement to rates. This morning we had the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, which increased to its highest level since September. As I explained yesterday, economists watch this number for an early read on the economy. Today we will have Construction Spending and the ISM index. Each day now we move closer to the mother of all data, the employment report, where the rubber meets the road; the so-called consensus is for job losses to be just 200K, but the range of guesses is very wide (-365K to -115K). The unemployment rate is expected at 9.6%, up from July. This report is due on Friday morning. Currently mortgage prices are a smidge worse than yesterday afternoon. Let me know if you have any questions.