Forecast for the Week 
- Data kicks off with Existing Home Sales on Monday followed by New Home Sales on Wednesday.
- Durable Goods Orders will be delivered on Thursday along with weekly Initial Jobless Claims.
- On Friday, the final reading for fourth quarter 2015 Gross Domestic Product will be reported.
Remember: Weak economic news normally causes money to flow out of Stocks and into Bonds, helping Bonds and home loan rates improve. In contrast, strong economic news normally has the opposite result. The chart below shows Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), which are the type of Bond on which home loan rates are based.
When you see these Bond prices moving higher, it means home loan rates are improving. When Bond prices are moving lower, home loan rates are getting worse.
To go one step further, a red “candle” means that MBS worsened during the day, while a green “candle” means MBS improved during the day. Depending on how dramatic the changes are on any given day, this can cause rate changes throughout the day, as well as on the rate sheets we start with each morning.
As you can see in the chart below, Mortgage Bonds rallied following the Fed’s Monetary Policy Statement Wednesday.
Chart: Fannie Mae 3.5% Mortgage Bond (Friday March 18, 2016)
The Mortgage Market Guide View…
Give Your Social Media a Visual Revamp
On social media, a picture really is worth a thousand words. In fact, posts with relevant images have greater engagement according to research by marketing insight company BuzzSumo. How much so? Twitter posts are 78 percent more likely to be shared if they include an image. On Facebook, posts with images receive 70 percent more shares than those without.
Here are five tips for using visuals more effectively in your social media posts:
Free stock photos may be all you need to communicate your point. Just be aware they can get repetitive (or show up on someone else’s site).
Mix it up. Retweet or repost images from your partners, colleagues and clients to help expand your reach and audience.
Create your own images with text overlays (think memes, inspirational quotes, screenshots of your workflow with text, cartoon captioning and infographics) using tools like Canva, PicMonkey or Piktochart.
Size it up. Social media platforms have different requirements for image sizes, as well as best practices for accompanying text:
- Facebook: Make sure your captions ask questions, state an opinion or start a conversation.
- Pinterest: Add details and information to captions for more repins.
- Twitter: Keep text around 100 characters or less, so retweets have space to write.
- LinkedIn: Ask questions and strike up conversations.
Economic Calendar for the Week of March 21 – March 25
|
Date
|
ET
|
Economic Report
|
For
|
Estimate
|
Actual
|
Prior
|
Impact
|
| Mon. March 21 |
10:00
|
Existing Home Sales |
Feb
|
NA
|
5.47M
|
Moderate
|
|
| Wed. March 23 |
10:00
|
New Home Sales |
Feb
|
NA
|
494K
|
Moderate
|
|
| Thu. March 24 |
08:30
|
Jobless Claims (Initial) |
3/19
|
NA
|
265K
|
Moderate
|
|
| Thu. March 24 |
08:30
|
Durable Goods Orders |
Feb
|
NA
|
4.9%
|
Moderate
|
|
| Fri. March 25 |
08:30
|
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) |
Q4
|
NA
|
1.0%
|
Moderate
|
|
| Fri. March 25 |
08:30
|
GDP Chain Deflator |
Q4
|
NA
|
0.9%
|
Moderate
|
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Mortgage Info By Michelle Wickett 