Mortgage Rates were slightly higher again today, marking the second day spent pulling back from a nice move lower that followed last week's Fed announcement.  Although mortgage rates aren't directly influenced by the Fed Funds Rate itself, quick changes in the expected course of central bank policy can cause volatility for most any lending rate.  This has been the case over the past 2 weeks.  Rates moved quickly higher after various speeches from the Fed and the European Central Bank earlier this month.

The recent move lower brought rates back into the range that dominated most of July and August.  The past 2 days of weakness haven't been big enough to threaten that range.  The conservative approach would be to consider yourself lucky that rates made it back to current levels and lock accordingly.  The more aggressive approach would be to treat the top of this range as the "warning track" that prompts you to lock at a loss.  You'll know we're crossing it when we talk about top tier conventional 30yr fixed quotes moving back up to 3.5%.  For now, we're still at 3.375%.