Thanks for visiting The Mortgage Reports. To stay absolutely current on mortgage markets and important guideline changes, be sure to take my free daily email alerts.

The trend is still holding, so to hammer the point home: to know what mortgage rates are doing lately, just check the stock market.

• As stocks go down, mortgage rates go down
• As stocks go up, mortgage rates go up

This is not a long-term, direct relationship by any means but it's holding true this week. 

The interplay between stocks and mortgage rates is a welcome development for home buyers because it's simpler for laypersons to follow the stock market than it is to follow the mortgage-backed securities market.  When you know what to expect with rates, after all, the mortgage shopping "experience" can be a little bit less stressful.

So, enjoy it while you can -- by next week, we could back to watching esoteric data like Balance of Trade figures.

(Image courtesy: Google Finance)

Dan Green is an active loan officer. Email or call 513-443-2020. Dan is on Twitter at @mortgagereports.