One of my sayings is “watching rates is like the Blue Angles” because if you look up when you hear them, they’re already past you.

This refers to marketing and news.  The way the market moves, it’s old news by the time the ink dries.

Below is a clip of the market from today (8-09) over the last 6 months. What you can see here is that whenever the market moves a lot in one direction, it tends to correct back.  Why by the time the news breaks that there was a great improvement or worsening, it’s already shifted again.

When I watch rates for my clients, I look at two things.  The first is the market trend.  The trend is the overall direction the market is heading from a more macro perspective.  The second is daily movement.  This is when we are looking at locking in a rate. 

Knowing how the market tends to move helps me time when to catch a dip and the right time to lock.