Mortgage Rates Bounce Back Toward Recent Highs

Mortgage rates gave back the improvement seen last Thursday and broke above last Wednesday's levels to hit the highest mark since June 10th. This isn't a big range in the bigger picture, but it does leave rates near 10-month highs.

The move is also a bit counterintuitive given developments in other markets and typical correlations. For instance, On almost any other recent trading day, if oil prices and European bond yields are both moving lower (they are), so are U.S. bond yields and rates.

The disconnect may be as simple as an ongoing reaction to last week's Fed announcement which confirmed that investors need to brace for a potentially higher rate path in the future and--at the very least--less transparency about how that rate path may evolve.