Mortgage rates fell on Friday after Chair Powell used his annual Jackson Hole speech to set the stage for a rate cut at the Fed’s September 17 meeting. Ahead of the speech, futures markets had priced in about a 75% chance of a rate cut at the September Fed meeting, but Powell’s remarks led to falling mortgage rates as bond market investors fully priced in that rate cut.
- Chair Powell concluded that “downside risks to employment are rising” while “[a] reasonable base case is that the [price] effects [of tariffs] will be relatively short lived.” Therefore, “with policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.” In plain English, he is saying that the Fed is intending to cut rates at their next meeting because they are more worried about tariffs causing higher unemployment than persistently higher tariffs.
- Mortgage rates as reported by Mortgage News Daily fell to 6.52%, down from over 7% at the beginning of this year and 6.75% at the beginning of this month.
The rate drop could be short-lived if the early September round of jobs and inflation data reverses the narrative.
- This dovish stance from the Fed is the result of a surprisingly weak July jobs report and a series of milder-than-expected inflation reports, but the next set of data could challenge the narrative Chair Powell described today.
- The next jobs report is in two weeks on September 5 and the next set of inflation data are coming on September 10 and 11, ahead of the September 17th meeting. So even though Chair Powell is pointing us to a rate cut, it’s still not completely set in stone.
With the rate cut priced in, mortgage rates will not drop further at the September 17 meeting if the race cut materializes—unless the Fed signals additional, faster cuts for the future. Rates will rise if the early September data takes away the expected cut.
Note: Updated at 1:30pm PDT to reflect revised mortgage rates
