Warsh delivered and the front end took it. The new Fed Chair's first Jackson Hole keynote said inflation is still too high and that the Committee may have to raise rates, and two-year Treasury yields rose more than twelve basis points before the close. The ten-year finished at 4.708% against Thursday's 4.687%, so the curve flattened on the day — this was a policy repricing, not a growth scare. The UMBS 30-year 5.5 coupon ended at 99.19. Mortgage News Daily's daily index closed at 6.81%, up six basis points and a three-week high; Bankrate's 30-year conventional prints 6.74% this morning, one basis point above Friday, with its 15-year at 6.08% and the 5/1 ARM at 6.33%. HousingWire has September hike odds at 57.4% post-speech. Mortgage News Daily's read is that the substance barely moved from Warsh's late-July remarks — what changed is that the market decided to price it.
The calendar is thin until it isn't. Jobless claims and Freddie Mac's weekly survey land Thursday September 3, then the employment report on Friday September 4 — that is the first print with the weight to reverse Friday's move, and it is a full week out. After that the FOMC meets September 15 and 16, and that meeting carries a Summary of Economic Projections, so the market gets a fresh dot plot from a Chair who has just reiterated he wants to lean less on forward guidance. CPI follows in the September 10 to 15 window. Between now and Thursday there is nothing scheduled with the size to move the tape, which in practice means the Friday level is the level until proven otherwise.
Where that leaves the range: Bankrate's 30-year at 6.74% sits just above its own 30-day average of 6.736% and inside a 30-day band of 6.67% to 6.80%. Pull the window out to 90 days and the band is 6.47% to 6.82% with an average of 6.653% — so today is roughly nine basis points rich to the quarter's average and within eight of its high. That is not a level to describe as elevated to a borrower, but it is emphatically not a dip either, and any pitch built on rates coming down is contradicted by the file. The 15-year at 6.08% is mid-band against a 30-day range of 6.03% to 6.15%, and the 5/1 ARM at 6.33% has barely moved in a month, which leaves the ARM-to-fixed gap at 41 basis points — narrow enough that the ARM is not doing much work for a borrower who does not have a genuine short horizon.
The segment that matters today is the note above 7.25%. At 6.74% on a $400,000 loan the principal and interest runs about $2,592 a month; the same balance at 7.25% is roughly $2,728 and at 7.75% about $2,866, so the savings are real at $136 and $274 a month respectively even at a level that is rich to the quarter. Meanwhile every in-flight file still floating lost its thesis on Friday — the soft-Jackson-Hole trade is over and the next scheduled help is six days away. Do this today: run your locked pipeline for expirations inside 30 days, flag anything still floating, and put a Monday-morning lock conversation on the calendar for each one.