Nothing moved today. The national 30-year is 6.76%, the same as Saturday, and the 10-year's last published close is still August 6 at 4.69% — Friday's session has not landed in the series. So the honest read is a quiet Sunday tape with no new catalyst since the payroll print. The one piece worth reading this weekend was Logan Mohtashami's spread work at HousingWire: spreads near 2.01%, and his argument is that at this 10-year level the spreads of 2023 and 2024 would have put the retail 30-year over 7% months ago. Set that next to yesterday's observation — that the market paid about three basis points for a contracting payroll number — and you get the real state of things. The level is being set by spread compression, not by a growth story and not by the 10-year. That is worth knowing because it is the part that can reverse on volatility alone, with no data behind it.
CPI is the whole week. The release window runs August 10 through 15. Jobless claims land August 13, Freddie Mac's weekly survey the same day, housing starts and permits August 16 through 18. The July 28-29 FOMC is behind us; the next meeting is September 15-16 and it carries a Summary of Economic Projections, so the market gets one inflation print and one jobs report before it sees a dot plot. The level to watch is not a technical one — it is 6.64%, where Mohtashami's purchase applications start softening. We are twelve basis points above it, and that is the number that shows up in your pipeline before it shows up on a chart.
On the range: 6.76% sits six basis points under the 90-day high of 6.82% and thirty-one above the 90-day low of 6.45%. The 30-day average is 6.70% and the 90-day average is 6.61%, so today is above both. Rich end of the range, not the cheap end, and up twenty basis points on the month.
The last two pulses worked the conventional refi cohort, so today look at loan structure instead of rate level, because the spreads between products are doing more work right now than the month-over-month move. FHA is 6.28%, VA 6.30%, the 5/1 ARM 6.29%, conventional 6.76%, jumbo 6.85%. VA at forty-six under conventional with no monthly mortgage insurance is worth about $121 a month on a $400,000 note. FHA at forty-eight under is a bigger headline number, but MIP is the caveat that decides whether it actually helps on a given file. And jumbo-to-conforming at nine basis points is unusually tight, which means a borrower sitting just above the conforming limit is barely paying for it right now. The segment worth an hour today is the file that got quoted conventional and never had a second structure run against it. Do this today: pull your last thirty conventional pre-approvals, flag every VA-eligible borrower and every file within ten percent of the conforming limit, and re-run both payments before Monday's calls.