Mortgage rates remained near recent highs for a 2nd straight day after rising quickly on the first two days of the week.  With the exception of only one other day, the past 3 days have been worst of 2015.   Lenders continue quoting conventional 30yr fixed rates of 4.125% on top tier scenarios.  On a positive note, today's market movement suggested more weakness than we actually saw on rate sheets.  That said, yesterday was the opposite.  The conclusion is that lenders are defensive and are leaving themselves a cushion on rate sheets to absorb the volatility and weakness that has quickly become the rule vs the exception.

The scary thing is that the past 3 days have actually been very well contained in terms of market movement.  Historically, that's not the kind of thing you want to see when rates are near their highest levels of the year.  If we must face the year's highest rates, it's preferable to see a huge, 1-day move to the highs that ends up bouncing just as hugely back in the opposite direction.  Instead, we've moved up with relatively little protest and obviously without a burning desire on the part of market participants to move back down.

The only positive thing to be said for such an environment is that it makes the decision to lock or float much easier.  There's just too little potential reward for holding off on locking if you're able to do so.  While there have been pockets of a few days here and there that have seen rates fall, the gains haven't been great, and you'd have to essentially guess that the next day would be positive without any trends supporting the decision.  Logically then, we'll need to actually see those trends (more good days than bad) before changing the currently defensive stance.

Keep in mind that next week could be extremely volatile with markets being closed Friday and the big Jobs report on Thursday.