Welcome to My Weekly Economic Calendar!

This week is a quick one. with the Easter Holiday coming up we will have a holiday shortened week, which tosses in a little confusion into the mix. (More on that in my comments below)

Here is a synopsis of this week's news:

• Monday, April 6: Nothing on the calendar. In the absence of data, look for stocks to dictate things.
• Tuesday, April 7: Treasury Auctions $6 Billion 10 year inflation indexed securities. The nice part about these bonds is the "indexed" factor.... Basically it makes them somewhat risk free for investors since the yield will adjust with inflation. Normally we need to be concerned about lack of interest in an auction that may raise rates, but the index feature is expected to draw strong investor demand
• Wednesday, April 8: February Wholesale inventories, expected -0.6%. Ancient news that is not likely to be looked at
• Wednesday: Treasury at work again with $34 Billion in 3 year notes. Shorter term notes usually draw stronger bids than longer term ones, so it should be well bid and not have an effect on Mortgage Rates.
• Wednesday: FOMC Meeting Minutes from March. Markets are expected to comb through this report with a fine tooth comb especially looking for details on the decision to buy treasuries and mortgages. Nothing on the surface here to suggest any surprises for the market.
• Thursday April 9: Initial Jobless claims for week ended 4/4, expected down 9,000. Analysts still expect the jobs market to take it on the chin for a while longer, so this should not surprise anyone.
• Thursday: Treasury sells 18 Billion in 10 year notes. This is the biggie in terms of news events and most likely to be watched closely.  If this auction is poorly bid it may be bad news for rates... The Fed is expected to be on the sidelines to buy to keep the yield from climbing too high.
• Thursday 2pm: Early close for the markets... Early closes over a long weekend can cause problems as traders square up ahead of the weekend.
• Friday: Market closed for Good Friday

As mentioned in the calendar notes, The Auctions will probably have the biggest impact in terms of actual data moves by the market. But we still have Stocks to contend with.  The past few weeks have been pretty good for stocks and that has caused rates to climb a bit as stocks went up. Historically speaking long weekends have been bad for interest rates, as Foreign markets are often open when we are closed. Usually this leads to conservative trading prior to the holiday and it is usually thin trading as well. Low volume trading can cause things to move erratically. We do have the Stock issue to contend with.  I have heard an analyst or two suggest that there may be some profit taking in Stocks ahead of the weekend which will end up being good news for rates... but that is yet to be seen.  I am 50/50 on what we may see happen and everything falls into place on Thursday. If the auction is poorly bid, and stocks climb Rates WILL be higher at the end of the week, BUT: if stocks sell off we will see improvement in interest rates by the end of the week...

Have a great week!

Rob

Robert Rauf

Mortgage Banker

www.RobertRaufHomeLoans.com   or my blog: http://activerain.com/blogs/rrauf

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