Last Updated: 12/20/2007

Thursday's bond market has opened in positive territory following the release of some weaker than expected economic news. The stock markets are mixed with the Dow down 30 points and the Nasdaq up 10 points. The bond market is currently up 7/32, which should improve this morning's mortgage rates by approximately .250 of a discount point over yesterday's morning rates. The final revision to the 3rd Quarter GDP was today's first release. It showed a reading of 4.9% as was expected and has not influenced bond trading or mortgage rates today. The second report was the Labor Department's posting of last week's unemployment claims. They said that 346,000 new claims for benefits were filed last week. This was an unexpected increase of approximately 12,000 claims. Usually this data does not influence trading much, but did have a minor favorable impact on this morning's due to a lack of highly important news being released.