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Are mortgage rates going up? Are mortgage rates going down? I am a regular participant in the Bankrate.com Mortgage Rate Trend survey and this week's survey may point you in the right direction.

The Bankrate.com survey is for conforming mortgages only. It is not specific to Cincinnati, nor does not apply to FHA mortgages, VA mortgages, jumbo mortgages, or super jumbo mortgages. For a personal rate offer, .

Here's the group's 30-day prediction for mortgage rates:

• 29% predict mortgage rates will increase
• 50% predict mortgage rates will decrease
• 21% predict mortgage rates will remain unchanged

I am setting the trend, predicting that mortgage rates will decrease over the next 30 days.

My advice not be appropriate for your individual situation and I'm not always accurate besides. Heck, you may find watching a video with every invocation of the name "McFly" in the entire Back to the Future Trilogy to be a better use of your time that reading my analysis.

Either way, here's what I told Bankrate.com:

"Seasonal trends push mortgage rates down."

Fundamentally, the economy looks to be improving. Housing is showing up big, consumer confidence is holding, and the Fed keeps signaling good news.  By all accounts, the stock market should be improving.

It's not.

After the Dow Jones' meteoric, 5-month run-up, profit-taking and nerves are making a showing.  The Dow is down on consecutive days in September amid whispers of a pending correction.  It's not out of the question, either, given that September is the worst month for stocks, historically.

September has some dubious distinctions:

• The 1929 stock market crash started in September
• The Dow's worst month ever was September 1931
• Major market losses occurred in September 1974 and 2001
• September 2008 was the epicenter of the current Financial Crisis

And considering that the Dow is up 45 percent since March, the market is ripe to fall and traders know it.

To say that Wall Street is walking on eggshells would be an understatement.  It's like everyone's just waiting for the light to change and this can easily develop into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Stocks would sink for no good reason -- similar to what we're seeing now.

For rate shoppers, it could be a break.

As traders shun risk, they'll park their money in things that are safe.  That includes mortgage-backed bonds.  More demand drives prices up and pushes rates down.  Homes would get more affordable and more homeowners could refinance.

So far, we haven't seen this happen, but I expect we will before October 1.

When rates finally fall, they may not fall by much and the dip may not last long.  Therefore, if you think you're going to need a new mortgage in the next few weeks, do yourself a favor and get pro-active about it.  Get your loan application in with a lender in advance.

Waiting for rates to fall and then trying to apply is a fight against time.

As a loan officer, I watch mortgage-backed securities and track rates on a real-time basis. That's something you can't get from the papers or from TV.  If you're not already committed to a loan officer and want to work with me, or call me.  I get access to good mortgage rates.

A "rate sheet" is a mortgage lender's official pricing menu and for the first time since November 2008 -- a month marked by financial market hysteria -- mortgage lenders issued 100 separate rate sheets over the last 2-month period.

Accounting for weekends and holidays, that's 2.38 rate sheets per day on average, or roughly 0.38 more than the number of meatball sandwiches Johnny Utah is asked to buy for Angelo. Mortgage rate volatility is back in a big way, folks.

To put the pace of change in perspective, consider this:

• In the last 60 days, lenders issued 4 or more rates sheets in a day once per week
• In the last 1 year, lenders issued 4 or more rates sheets in a day once per month

The last 2 months have been a mortgage rate whirlwind.  For homeowners and home buyers in places like Cincinnati and Chicago, it's been difficult to zero in on mortgage rates and lock them in.  With rates are "expiring" every 2 hours 57 minutes, it's enough to make a person want to go back in time to, say, February and March.

The good news here, though, is that the recent volatility may be a signal that mortgage rate collusion among Big Bank Lenders is ending.

There's no evidence to support a claim like this, but for a very long while, rates trended tightly among the biggest players with very little difference in rates or points. Then, starting about 10 days ago, pricing started to open up a bit; to separate from bank to bank.

The volatility we've seen lately may really just be the return of competitive pricing to the mortgage space.  This idea is backed by the VIX -- otherwise known the "Fear Index".  The VIX is currently at its lowest levels since the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Or, deferring to Occam's Razor, mortgage rates may be jumpy because there's still a lot of uncertainty about the U.S. economy.

Either way, life is tough for home buyers and people wanting to refinance.

As a guy who sees rates change all the time and without much notice, I'll say this: unless you're prepared to accept a higher rate that what you've just been quoted, you may not want to gamble on getting a lower one.  An eighth-of-a-percent can add up over time but for some reason, it seems to add up a lot faster when you're wasting money instead of saving it.

If you don't have the means to watch mortgage rate changes in real-time, consider following me on Twitter.

Now, if you've never been on Twitter, it's seriously simple.  When you go to follow me, Twitter will ask you to register for a free account.  Do it.  Then, whenever you log back into Twitter, you'll see my last series of updates.  It will give you a feel for whether rates are improving or worsening.

Mortgage rates are notoriously volatile when the Federal Open Market Committee meets and today is such a day.  Today's meeting is one of  this year.

The Federal Open Market Committee is a rotating, 12-member sub-group within the Federal Reserve that debates about financial and economic conditions around the county, and votes on new policies meant to spur, steady, or slow economic growth.

The FOMC's economic toolbox is big, filled with programs and policies that most laypersons have never heard of, or even thought of.  The group's most well-known tool, though, also happens to be its most wielded -- the Federal Funds Rate.

The Fed Funds Rate is the rate at which banks borrow from each other overnight.  The lower the rate, the less banks pay in interest costs, and the more money is available for lending. 

It's in this way that the Fed Funds Rate impacts the economy.  When it's down, banks tend to lend more money, giving the economy room to grow.  And, conversely, when it's up, banks tend to lend less, constricting economic expansion.  This is one reason why FOMC meetings are such big news -- the Federal Reserve has a direct impact on the future of the U.S. economy.

The FOMC is expected with 100% certainty to vote the Fed Funds Rate unchanged from its current 0.000-0.250% target range at today's meeting.  Therefore, it won't be what the FOMC does that matters to mortgage rates. It will be what the FOMC says.

With the economy flopping between growth and recession, and with the Fed pledging to keep the Fed Funds Rate low for as long as necessary, markets will break down the FOMC press release for clues about what's in store economically for late-2009 and 2010.  As one example, if inflation is singled out as a threat, mortgage rates should rise because inflation erodes the value of mortgage bond repayments.

Given the current environment of low mortgage rates -- whether you live in Hyde Park, Cincinnati or Hyde Park, Chicago -- there's definitely more chance of mortgage rates rising this afternoon than falling.  There's only so much lower rates can go, you have to believe.

The Fed's press release hits the wires at 2:15 PM ET today.  If you're the cautious type, consider locking your rate prior to the release.