USA 2-year bond yield hits multi-year high on hawkish Fed

Rates on home loans edged slightly upward in Bankrate’s weekly survey.

With Trump’s speech light on details, the market focused on the growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates sooner and maybe more times this year than previously thought. Canada’s current account deficit in the fourth quarter narrowed sharply to C$10.73 billion ($8.07 billion), its lowest in more than five years, thanks largely to rising exports, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday. Silver, however, remained reasonably strong in comparison with gold, seeing the gold:silver ratio fall to around 67.8 – but still substantially higher than the 65 we have been predicting as likely to be reached some time during the year.

The Fed left rates unchanged at its January meeting, and had not been expected to move again until May or June in part because so little is known about US President Donald Trump’s fiscal plans.

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams said Tuesday he personally sees no need to delay raising rates until after the Fed’s March meeting, though he said a case could be made for postponing it. Investors are taking their cues from Fed officials, such as Dallas Fed Bank President Robert Kaplan, who said today at an event in Norman, Oklahoma, that an increase should come in “the near future.”, according to Reuters. The yield curve also flattened, as the 10-year Treasury rate edged up to 2.39% while the 2-year Treasury popped almost 7 basis points to 1.26%.

Several Fed speakers so far this week have already succeeded in boosting the market pricing of a March hike to 70% from 20% last week. A bank that wants to see a hike might be buying Fed funds futures to try and somehow manipulate the Fed’s thinking.

Since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, the Fed has adopted a highly “data dependent” approach to policy making. When interest rates move lower, commodities tend to rise in price.

Given how integral strong services growth is to United Kingdom economic stability, a large drop is likely to exacerbate existing concerns about how the United Kingdom economy will fare once Brexit has been completed.

The mortgages in this week’s survey had an average total of 0.27 discount and origination points. They don’t change rates based on what Trump may or may not do, and Trump’s policies likely won’t affect the economy until 2018. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), expects gold output to rise 3% annually by 2020.

The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate jumbo mortgage rose to 4.3% from 4.28%.

What a shift we’ve seen in United States interest rate expectations over the past two days.

A mortgage rate lock guarantees that you’ll get an agreed-upon interest rate if you close the loan by a certain date. He believes there are greater chances for a rate hike as the economy clearly permits them. If you do, stop paying attention to mortgage rates so you don’t go insane if rates edge downward.