Mortgage Rates Today, October 6, 2025: This Week's a Virtual Desert for Economic Reports

The bigger picture

This week was always going to be a quiet one for economic reports. But the government shutdown means no official, government-published data can be released. And that turns from now until Friday into a statistical desert.

Only two reports remain on the calendar. One is tomorrow's consumer credit report (published by the Federal Reserve, so unaffected by the shutdown), but that almost never affects mortgage rates.

The other is Friday morning's consumer sentiment index from the University of Michigan. That can move mortgage rates, but rarely very far.

Flying blind

If you read the financial media, you'll probably have seen talk of investors and the Fed "flying blind." Like a pilot whose cockpit instruments have failed, both groups lack the information they need to make safe decisions.

This isn't too big a problem if the government shutdown turns out to be brief. Delayed reports will be published fairly quickly, and course corrections when the cockpit lights up again are likely to be minor.

However, a long shutdown could pose much bigger problems. Markets are particularly focused on employment and inflation, and will be forced to make assumptions about what's happening in the absence of reliable data. There's a real risk that those assumptions will be wrong.

On Sunday, Barron's highlighted one of those risks under the headline, "The Shutdown Leaves the Fed Flying Blind. Don’t Be So Sure About Rate Cuts."

"Investors are all but certain the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates again this month," says Barron's. "But policymakers are signaling the path ahead may be rockier than traders anticipate, and the government shutdown further darkens the trail."

The article is certainly correct about investors' assumptions. The CME FedWatch tool shows investors reckon there's a 94.6% probability of another quarter-point rate cut when the Fed next makes a policy announcement on October 29. And they put the chances of a similar cut at the following meeting, on December 10, at 84.9%.

True, at its last meeting, on September 17, 10 policymakers thought two more rate cuts this year were on the cards, provided the data justified them. However, nine believed there would be either one more cut or none. "The gap between market conviction and policymaker hesitation means markets may be in for a surprise later this month," as Barron's put it.

That's a real threat to continuing falls in mortgage rates. While the Fed doesn't directly determine mortgage rates, it either influences the investors that do, or it and they are influenced by the same information.

Either way, there's a correlation between Fed rates and mortgage rates, though with a time lag. Mortgage rates move in anticipation of Fed changes.

And, if a Fed cut doesn't materialize later this month, mortgage rates might rise. An attempt to better manage markets' expectations may be behind the Fed scheduling some 19 different speaking engagements for its top officials this week.

What's coming up?

Although economic reports are usually the main drivers of changes to mortgage rates, they're not the only ones. The general mood in markets and economically consequential news can also affect those rates. News items concerning employment, inflation, tariffs and deficit funding are especially influential at the moment.

Mortgage rates today

There are no economic reports on today's MarketWatch economic calendar.