Playing it safe, Lakeland mortgage borrowers should consider locking in favorable mortgage rates ahead of today’s FOMC meeting adjournment.
The Federal Open Market Committee wraps up its scheduled, 2-day meeting today at 2:15 PM ET in Washington. It’s the first of 8 scheduled meetings for the policy-setting group in 2010.
As usual, we’ll see a press release just after today’s meeting adjourns that recaps the FOMC’s views of the country’s current economic condition and provides its outlook for the near-term future.
These press releases are brief, but comprehensive, and Wall Street eats them up. Every word, sentence and phrase is carefully picked apart by analysts hoping to achieve any possible investment edge over other active traders.
It’s for this reason that mortgage rates tend to be jittery on days the FOMC adjourns. Wall Street is frantically re-balancing its bets.
Lakeland mortgage borrowers will see much of the same today.
While I don’t expect to see a change in the current Fed Funds rate, we do need to pay attention to the language the Fed uses in its statement today.
After the Fed’s last meeting in December, it made several observations:
- The jobs market is getting “less worse”
- The housing sector is making improvements
- Financial markets are stabilizing further
The economy is gradually improving, the Fed told us, but there are still risks to the economy ahead. Furthermore, inflation remains in check.
As compared to December’s press release, today’s FOMC statement will be closely watched. If the Fed changes its verbiage in any way that alludes to strong growth and/or inflation in 2010, expect mortgage rates in Lakeland, Florida to rise as Wall Street moves its money from bonds to stocks.
Conversely, reference to slower growth in 2010 should lead rates lower.
We can’t know what the Fed will say so if you’re floating a mortgage rate right now or wondering whether the time is right to lock, the safe approach would be to lock prior to 2:15 PM ET Wednesday. After that, what happens to rates is anyone’s guess.
I hope you found this post useful! As always, if you or anyone you know is in need of a local Florida mortgage broker, I’m your guy. Call me at 863-604-3019 or apply online for your Florida mortgage. We’ll keep you posted and let you know when it’s time to pull the trigger!
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