The high did not hold. Bankrate's conventional 30-year printed 6.83% this morning, eight basis points below yesterday's 6.91% — a level that stood for exactly one session before the tape took it back. The retracement is not a repricing. Mortgage News Daily read Tuesday as early strength giving way to steady selling, with bonds tracking oil almost tick for tick: yields fell between 8:20 and 9:10 in the morning and turned back up with crude for the balance of the day. The 10-year Treasury was 4.78% at its last published read on September 4, one basis point above where it sat when we wrote about the break. Nothing under the surface has changed; a day of positioning got unwound, and the data that would actually move the level has not printed yet.
The calendar is short and it is dense. Weekly jobless claims land tomorrow, September 10, against a 206,000 last read that ticked up from 204,000. CPI is due in the September 10-15 window. Then the FOMC meets September 15-16, and that meeting carries a Summary of Economic Projections — the statement at 2:00pm Eastern on the 16th, press conference at 2:30. Fed funds is 3.63%. The competing reads worth holding in your head: commodity inflation is running hot on the energy side, but the committee has stayed anchored on core rather than the headline pass-through, which is the argument against a hawkish surprise. Pulling the other way, the New York Fed consumer survey had unemployment expectations worsening while inflation expectations held flat. Both prints land before the dot plot, so this week resolves the question rather than deferring it.
Today's 6.83% sits above the 30-day average of 6.75% and well above the 90-day average of 6.67%. The 30-day range is 6.67% to 6.91% and the 90-day range is 6.47% to 6.91% — so we are eight basis points off the top of both windows and thirty-six above the bottom of the quarter. On Bankrate's own series the 30-year is up eight basis points over seven days and seven over thirty; Freddie Mac's separate weekly PMMS read 6.71% on September 3, up five on the week and two on the month. Every window that matters says the same thing: higher than a week ago, higher than a month ago, near the rich end of the quarter. Today was a step back, not a turn.
The government-loan side is where today is genuinely different. Bankrate's FHA 30-year rose six basis points to 6.55% while conventional fell eight, which compresses the FHA discount to twenty-eight basis points from forty-two yesterday — the tightest it has been in two weeks and matched only by September 2 in that window. VA held flat at 6.57%, so FHA is now quoting two basis points inside VA, an unusual ordering. Jumbo at 6.81% remains below conforming for a second session. The practical read: if you have been steering marginal-credit purchase files to FHA on the pricing argument alone, that argument is fourteen basis points weaker than it was yesterday, and it may keep compressing if conventional keeps easing. Run the comparison fresh rather than from last week's assumption. Do this today: pull every in-process FHA file that has not locked, re-run it against conventional at 6.83% with today's mortgage-insurance math, and lock the ones where the gap no longer justifies the FHA structure — before CPI removes the choice.