Mortgage Rates Today, November 9, 2026: Rates Start the Week in Great Shape

The bigger picture

Mortgage rates inched modestly lower last Friday, despite a better-than-expected jobs report. Tech stocks were already falling before the midterms, but last week’s elections may slow the data center build-out and see greater regulation of AI.

So, many stock investors sold their tech stocks and fled to the relative safety of bond markets. That pushed up bond prices and reduced bond yields; those always move inversely. Mortgage rates are largely determined by yields on mortgage bonds (aka mortgage-backed securities), so they fell, too.

There’s nothing on today’s economic calendar that’s likely to affect mortgage rates, so any movements will likely be a result of changing sentiment in markets. However, tomorrow’s consumer price index (CPI) really could have an impact on those rates if it contains surprises.

Scroll on down for much more on the forces affecting mortgage rates today, including the lone and unimportant economic report on this morning's calendar.

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What's coming up?

Normally, economic reports are the main drivers of changes to mortgage rates. But these are not normal times.

And typically, only blockbuster reports, mostly concerning employment and inflation, have had an appreciable impact over much of this year. More important have been the general mood in markets and economically consequential news. News items concerning the war, employment, inflation, tariffs, and deficit funding are especially influential now.

Recently, panicking investors in tech stocks have been moving mortgage rates lower. Some of them have been switching their money into bonds, one type of which largely determines mortgage rates. The extra demand has pushed bond prices higher, which inevitably makes their yields (and those rates) lower.

The Fed

On Oct. 28, the Federal Reserve's rate-setting body (the Federal Open Market Committee or FOMC) voted 10-2 to hold the federal funds rate steady. That rate affects almost all variable-rate borrowing.

The FOMC hiked general interest rates for the first time in three years at its previous meeting on Sep. 16 with a unanimous vote. But official Fed documents (especially the dot plot) revealed that FOMC members were deeply divided over what should come next.

There was no dot plot issued after the October meeting, but we’re expecting one in December.

"Sixteen of 19 officials expect another increase at either their October or December meeting," reported MarketWatch soon after the September meeting. "For next year, 10 officials signaled they see no more moves, but eight officials are penciling in another quarter-point increase."

Such small majorities within the FOMC suggest the number and timing of future rate hikes will likely be driven by key data: inflation and employment reports in the coming months. The Fed's dual mandates are to keep inflation around 2% (something it has failed to achieve over the last five years) and to maintain healthy employment levels.

Unfortunately, we think inflation will likely remain elevated well into 2027, even if the Iran war ends soon. We suspect the global oil market is in such bad shape that gas and diesel prices will take a long time to fall back to anything close to pre-war levels. More on that below.

In our view, last Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report likely increased the chances of a Fed rate hike next month. With employment levels looking good, it has little excuse not to focus on inflation, which is still way higher than its target.

However, others disagree. Over the weekend, the CME FedWatch tool put the chances of a hike at the FOMC's next meeting on Dec. 19 at 76.3%, down from Wednesday evening's 82.7%.

It's worth noting that a Democratic Senate is unlikely to allow the president, who has repeatedly said he wants sharply lower interest rates, to pack the FOMC with those who share his view.

The FOMC doesn't directly set new fixed-rate mortgage rates. But the factors that influence its decisions (and, to a lesser extent, the decisions themselves) certainly do move those rates, usually ahead of Fed rate-change announcements.

The war

“The Democrats’ midterm-election gains have raised questions about how the Trump administration will proceed on the Iran war — specifically whether it will restart large-scale strikes or focus on negotiations,” said The Wall Street Journal on Nov. 6.

Before the midterms, the president had threatened renewed military action against Iran. Since then, he’s held off on such rhetoric and has suggested he may adopt a wait-and-see approach to peace talks, which are currently being conducted through mediators. However, he sounded skeptical about their likely outcome.

This has created considerable uncertainty for markets. However, right now they have other issues to manage, especially in the tech sector.

The refinery problem

"Consumers don’t buy crude oil. They buy gasoline, jet fuel and diesel," Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston, told The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 5. "'As a result of missile and drone strikes in the Middle East, several large refineries have been damaged. The world finds itself short of refined products.'

"The recovery [if any] in oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz won’t fix the problem anytime soon," continued The Journal. Flows at that time included only about half the refined products that used to pass through the Strait: 11% of overall flows rather than the pre-war 20%+.

That's because many oil refineries in the Middle East are out of commission due to damage from the Iranian war. Unfortunately, the exact same thing is happening in Russia owing to drone and airstrikes on its refineries by Ukraine. So, the world is very short of refined oil products.

Regardless of oil prices, the refinery crisis has so far translated into gas prices that are dramatically higher than a year ago, alongside diesel prices that have been frequently setting record highs. However, regular gas dropped by 30+ cents a gallon over the last month and diesel 9 cents.

Why those falls? There is some evidence that American consumers have been driving less since gas prices rose, lowering demand. Also, gas prices are traditionally much lower in November because winter-blend gasoline is cheaper to refine. There is also some evidence of market manipulation.

Of course, a lack of refining capacity exacerbates rather than moderates supply issues for consumers and businesses, if demand remains steady.

No wonder The Financial Times wrote on Oct. 8, "Crude futures [what most people call oil prices] are no longer a reliable guide to the inflationary impact of fuel prices."

Of course, any sudden good news from the Middle East could still send mortgage rates tumbling, regardless of that day's economic reports. Unfortunately, sudden bad news could send them higher.

Why bond markets act differently from stock markets

Mortgage rates are largely dictated by the yields on a type of bond, the mortgage-backed security (MBS). So, we focus on bond markets.

On May 7, The New York Times explored why stock markets and bond markets have been behaving so differently from each other since the start of the conflict in the Middle East.

Investors in stocks have been wagering that U.S. companies will continue to generate large profits during the conflict. And the stock market typically cares only about whether dividends and company values will continue to rise.

"But the bond market is another matter," said The Times. "Bond traders have maintained a much sharper focus on risk. Yields remain correlated with shifts in the price of oil. As oil prices have spiked and inflation has risen, yields have risen and bond prices, which move in the opposite direction, have fallen."

More recently, bond yields (and mortgage rates) have risen on concerns about the level of government debt, too.

Fifth Third Bank's weekly preview

Last Tuesday, Bill Adams, Fifth Third Commercial Bank's chief U.S. economist, published his weekly preview. But he also took a sneak peak at tomorrow’s inflation report:

"The CPI’s increase will slow in October on a partial reversal of September’s spike in gasoline," he wrote. "The Bureau of Labor Statistics won’t publish a year-over-year value for the October CPI since last October’s government shutdown prevented the month’s survey. If they did, the CPI would likely be up about 3.75% year over year this October, and core CPI [which excludes energy and food prices] about 2.75%."

Market expectations sometimes differ from the forecasts of Adams and his team because they're drawn from a wider pool of analysts.

Mortgage rates today

The only economic report on today's MarketWatch economic calendar is September’s monthly wholesale trade inventories. And we can’t remember a single instance of that affecting mortgage rates.

Mortgage rates typically rise on better-than-expected data and fall on worse-than-expected numbers. But, as we saw on Friday, these aren’t normal times.

What's next?

October’s consumer price index (CPI) is this week’s star report, and it’s due tomorrow. Although jobs reports are usually more influential, at times like these, when inflation is front of mind for investors, the CPI can be even more consequential for mortgage rates.

Wednesday is Veterans Day and bond markets will be closed. So, we won’t be posting an edition of this column that day. But we’ll be back on Thursday.

This week’s other possibly important report is the producer price index (PPI), due Friday. This is the CPI’s kid brother and measures price changes in the wholesale phase of the supply chain.