U.S. mortgage applications rose for a second straight week, with demand for home refinancing loans rising to its highest level since early June, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
Applications for loans to buy a home, an early indicator of sales, rose slightly, but nevertheless gained for a fourth consecutive week.
Now, this appears to have everything to do with the short term drop in interest rates. It's across the board good news with new purchase applications also up. Though, we'll see how everything holds up if and when rates go back up.
For the time being, most interest rates are doing well. The ten Year U.S. Treasury is currently trading at 3.44% just off its lows over the last six weeks. The 30 year mortgage is still below 5.5%. That's all happened just as equities have also taken off and so the money hasn't been transferred but is moving into both markets at the same time. The yield spread between the two and ten year has also tightened a bit to 2.39%.
The Dow was up for the sixth straight day yesterday. The indices are down this morning but all just slightly, below a half a percent. July durable good orders will come out in the next fifteen minutes.
Markets in the Far East were up across the board. The Hang Seng in China was up .1%, the NIKKEI in Japan was up 1.36%, and the Straits Time Index in Singapore was up .37%. It was the opposite in Europe. The FTSE in London was down .32%, the DAX in German was down .41% and the Spanish index was down .74%. Only the Italian index was up .3%. Meanwhile, oil continues its decline and is currently trading at $71.55 a barrel. That's down nearly $3 a barrel from its highs late last week.
Things are relatively quiet in currencies. The Dollar is up .13% against the Euro, up .56% against the British Pound and up .04% against the Yen.
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