Updated on Mar 9 2010 12:02PM EST

Tuesday’s bond market has opened up slightly, but not enough to improve mortgage rates. The stock markets are showing minor gains with the Dow up 13 points and the Nasdaq up 9 points. The bond market is currently up 4/32, which should keep this morning’s mortgage rates at yesterday’s levels.

There is no relevant economic data scheduled for release today or tomorrow morning. The 10-year Treasury Note auction will be held tomorrow while the 30-year bond sale will be held Thursday. Results of both sales will be posted at 1:00 PM ET of each day. If investor demand was high, we may see bonds rally during afternoon trading, however, weak demand could lead to selling and an increase to mortgage rates. The results of the last sales do not give us much to look forward to, so it is not likely that these auctions will fuel a bond rally and a downward trend in mortgage pricing.

The week’s first factual economic data will come Thursday morning. January’s Goods and Services Trade Balance will be released early Thursday morning. It gives us the size of the U.S. trade deficit and is expected to show a $41.0 billion deficit. It is the week’s least important piece of news and likely will not influence mortgage rates much.

Also Thursday is the weekly release of unemployment figures from the Labor Department. They are expected to say that 460,000 new claims for unemployment benefits were filed last week, which would be a decline from the previous week. The larger the number, the better the news for bonds and mortgage pricing. However, since it tracks only a week’s worth of new claims, it usually takes a wide variance between forecasts and the actual total for it to affect mortgage rates.

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