Interest rate outlook

The following are excerpts from the newsletter on interest rates published by HSH Associates :

The Fed certainly has a lot of shifting sand to ponder when it meets next week. In the current domestic and global economic climate, interest rates will have difficulty getting any kind of reliable upward traction. That said, the Fed has a bit of a difficult job when it comes to the message it releases Wednesday afternoon, as too optimistic an outlook risks confusing the market as to what and where they are seeing brightening skies, while too pessimistic an outlook would also roil markets, who would then start the drumbeat for the Fed to consider cutting interest rates sooner than later. Cautious optimism is about the best message they can convey, and we expect that’s what we’ll get.

There’s not much new data out before the Fed meeting, so markets won’t have much by way of additional clues to work with. With a soft fade for interest rates as the week came to a close, odds favor little change to mortgage rates in the coming days, but we might see a couple of basis point decline in the average offered rate for 30-year FRMs that Freddie Mac reports next Thursday