US MBA 30-Year Mortgage Rate (Oct/09) 7.50% (Prev. 7.49%)

The MBA weekly survey is one of the lower-signal fixtures on the US calendar, and a one-basis-point move sits well inside the series' normal week-to-week noise. Prints of this kind rarely move rates on their own; the mortgage rate here is a lagging reflection of where longer-dated Treasury yields have already traded, so the information content for the front end is minimal. The distinction that has mattered in past episodes is between the rate line and the applications data in the same release: purchase and refinance volumes are the components that speak to housing demand elasticity at elevated rate levels, and they have historically been the part desks key on when the level of rates is near cyclical highs. A flat rate print at these levels says little about direction; sustained drift in either direction over several weeks, tracking the long end, is what has tended to feed into housing starts, existing home sales and the builders. The follow-ons are the applications indices within the release and the scheduled housing data further out on the calendar.