Ready, set, hike! While the Patriots and Eagles are bearing down on each other in the upcoming Super Bowl, the Fed is about to do some hiking of it’s own. But first, let’s take a look back to last week, when mortgage bonds lost some yardage on stronger Home Sales and Consumer Confidence numbers. This caused a dip in prices and a move higher in rates, but then a fumbled Durable Goods number and missed GDP (Gross Domestic Product) Report had bonds and rates “high stepping” into the end zone to finish the week.

As forecasted in last week’s issue of the Mortgage Market Guide Weekly, mortgage bonds put in a price peak at the top of their trading range after bumping into a solid ceiling of resistance at $101.97. This pattern occurred twice before - on October 25, 2004 and December 8, 2004, which can be seen in the chart below.

WITH TV REALITY SHOWS IN VOGUE, A NEW KIND OF HARSH REALITY IS HITTING YOUR INBOX – AN “EXTREME FAKE-OVER” CAN INTERCEPT YOUR IDENTITY AND RECORD YOUR PASSWORDS WITHOUT YOU EVEN KNOWING IT. DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S VIEW TO FIND OUT HOW THIS HAPPENS AND WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF.

The action in the financial markets heats up this week as the Fed delivers their Monetary Policy Decision on Wednesday and the high-impact Jobs Report is scheduled for Friday. A 25bp hike in the Fed Funds Rate is a lock. But, the focus will be on the policy statement to see if the Fed will have any surprising comments, which would affect home loan rates.

Just when the smoke clears, January’s Jobs Report comes in hot and heavy on Friday. Expectations are for 185,000 new job creations. This important release has the ability to influence home loan rates for days and even weeks. If the report shows greater than expected Job growth, we will likely see mortgage bond pricing decline and home loan rates spike higher and vice versa.

Technically, the bond is in the middle of a range between a long-term ceiling of resistance at $101.97 and a floor of support at the 100-day Moving Average, presently at $101.54. This week’s hard-hitting news could knock mortgage bonds out of this range.

Now more than ever – you have to be ultra cautious of what’s lurking inside your inbox. The scammers are getting smarter every day, and as soon as we wise up to a new trick, they’ve already got another on the loose.

So you’ve likely already heard of “Phishing”…the term being used to describe a type of identity theft where scammers imitate legitimate companies in e-mails to entice people to share user names, passwords, account information or credit card numbers. The term “Phishing” comes from the fact that Internet scammers are using increasingly sophisticated lures as they "fish" for users' private information. The most common ploy is to copy the look and feel of a web page from a major company, and then use that design to set up a nearly identical page or email communication in order to deceive consumers.

But now there’s a whole new “Phishing” scam that’s even more dangerous than the last. Now just by clicking the links to some emails – without entering any personal information at all – you may unknowingly download a program that will lie in wait on your computer until you visit one of your financial websites. The prey? Your passwords, account numbers, credit card and ID information that you may type in when you do visit your own bank account online, or other legitimate financial or retail sites.

Just clicking the link may be enough to identify you as a “clicker”, which puts your name at the top of list to be sold to other scammers. Soon enough a flood of Phishing emails are on their way to you!

How can you protect yourself? Here are a few quick tips.

Stay on guard. Be cautious of any email that is using scare tactics about security breaches, or urgently requiring you to provide information online regarding your financial accounts. This includes notices from web retailers asking you to confirm your order information.

Purge. If you get an email from a financial institution, kill it and call for verification. Your bank, financial institution, or credit card company will rarely, if ever, contact you by email, especially considering the increasing frequency of these scams.

Be “S”ecure. Before you give any web site your credit card, make sure it’s a secure site by looking for “https://” in the browser tool bar, not just “http://”.

Vaccinate. Keep your anti-virus and firewall software up to date. While no virus protection is completely foolproof, be sure to keep as up-to-date as possible on your protection software. It’s a minor investment to make considering what’s at risk.

Double check. Carefully review your credit card statements and bank statements online frequently to monitor and catch any irregular activity.

Report. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) says the number of reported incidents of Phishing scam climbed 800% in the first six months of 2004, and a staggering 4000% in the six months between November 2003 and May 2004. With mass e-mailings, each of these unique attacks can potentially hit thousands, if not millions, of people. When you get some bogus bait…take a minute to report it and help slow the disease. Forward the information to spam@uce.gov, reportphishing@antiphishing.org and to the "abuse" e-mail address at the company that is being spoofed (e.g. "spoof@ebay.com").

For additional information on Phishing, check out the following websites:

Guarding Your Financial Privacy

FTC’s Identity Theft site

The economic calendar gets “supercharged” this week with several reports having a high potential impact on the bond market and interest rates. The week’s string of high impact reports begins with Monday’s Chicago Purchase Managers’ Index (Chicago PMI), Tuesday’s Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Index and the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy statement and ends with a bang on Friday with the often volatile Employment Report for January.

All times listed in the table below are Eastern.

Remember, as a general rule, weaker than expected economic data is good for rates, while positive data causes rates to rise.

For the week of January 31 – February 4