Mortgage Backed Securities are PLUS 65bps this morning.

The guy sitting on the bench never strikes out. The only problem is he is never in the game to begin with. That means if you are in the game long enough you will strike out every once in awhile. It is not because you did not do the research or did not see the market trends. With the best intentions you are sometimes on the wrong side. I was on the wrong side yesterday.

I wrote yesterday to lock the rate in front of a big jobs number. The markets rallied in the afternoon and were poised to rally again this morning. Then the job numbers were horrific. Analysts predicted 120,000 jobs would be created in June. The actual number was 18,000 jobs. The goes against the four manufacturing reports that said orders had increased. There were actually 57,000 private sector jobs created last month. The government laid off 39,000 employees to help balance their budgets.

What investors will have to digest is if we are in a soft patch or quicksand. Private sector job growth is what we need to create and sustain growth. We just need to stabilize the housing sector and keep the private sector busy to grow the economy. No one said it would be easy and it is time for Washington to get it figured out.

Milwaukee Mortgage Rates retreat on job reports and the rate direction is lower today.