Wall Street spent Tuesday looking two directions at once, and anyone focused on buying a home in Myrtle Beach has a useful set of numbers to work with as a result. Tech and chip stocks rallied for a second straight session on renewed AI enthusiasm, the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting opened with a rate decision due Wednesday afternoon, and Boeing shares dropped sharply after the plane maker cut its delivery outlook. Mortgage rate trackers moved in the opposite direction of last week’s gentle easing, ticking back up on the day, while the 10-year Treasury yield held just under 5% heading into tomorrow’s Fed announcement. Here’s what moved in the markets today, where rates stand heading into the Fed decision, and what the real dollar math looks like for anyone weighing buying a home in Myrtle Beach this week.
Today’s Market Snapshot
All three major indexes closed higher Tuesday, with technology once again doing the heaviest lifting. The S&P 500 climbed 45.83 points, or 0.60%, to close at 7,722.60. The Nasdaq Composite led the pack for a second straight session, adding 308.43 points, or 1.18%, to finish at 26,477.81, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a smaller gain of 15.99 points, or roughly 0.03%, to settle at 52,377.57. The small-cap Russell 2000 also had a strong day, rising 1.16%. The CBOE Volatility Index, Wall Street’s fear gauge, fell about 3.97% to close at 17.66, a sign traders are heading into Fed week calmer than the headlines suggest.
The biggest story under the hood was a renewed rally in chip and AI-adjacent names, building on the enthusiasm that followed Monday’s Anthropic IPO filing. Meta disclosed plans to raise up to $95 billion in stock to fund its AI infrastructure buildout, and Nvidia said it would invest $3 billion directly into Meta — another sign of how intertwined the capital flows behind this AI buildout have become. Not every earnings report landed well: Boeing shares fell roughly 10% after the company cut its full-year delivery target, even though it reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss and revenue above estimates. Coca-Cola beat estimates and raised its outlook but still slipped about 1.6% on softer North American demand, while SoFi surged on strong results and UPS climbed after raising its full-year guidance.
The bigger event for markets, though, is the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting, which got underway Tuesday with a decision due Wednesday afternoon. Most traders are pricing in a hold on the Fed’s benchmark rate, with futures markets showing only modest odds of a surprise move either way; a number of economists are framing the likely outcome as a “hawkish pause” given that inflation has stayed sticky even as hiring has cooled. Alphabet and Microsoft are both scheduled to report earnings Wednesday after the close, adding another layer of catalysts to an already busy 24 hours. Commodities were mixed: West Texas Intermediate crude fell about 1.65% to settle near $100.08 a barrel as hopes for a U.S.-Iran de-escalation eased supply-risk premiums, even as Houthi attacks on Saudi targets kept the geopolitical backdrop fragile. Gold bucked that trend, rising about 0.88% to roughly $4,073.80 an ounce as some investors hedged ahead of tomorrow’s announcement.
The Rate Picture for Buying a Home in Myrtle Beach: A Small Step Back Before the Fed Decision
This is the section that matters most for anyone actively working on buying a home in Myrtle Beach, and today’s reading was a mild step in the less favorable direction after last week’s relief. The 10-year Treasury yield, which mortgage rates track closely, sat right around 4.99% today, up a touch on the session as traders positioned ahead of Wednesday’s Fed announcement rather than reacting to any single new data point — a reminder that yields often drift in the day or two before a Fed decision simply because markets are digesting probabilities, not because anything has fundamentally changed in the inflation or growth picture.
Real-time rate trackers reflected that same modest uptick. Same-day mortgage rate trackers put the 30-year fixed at approximately 7.23% today, up roughly 11 basis points from Monday’s reading, though still below the 7.32% level this same type of tracker showed a week earlier, on October 20 — a pattern that’s been common throughout October, with daily rates bouncing in a narrow band while grinding gradually lower overall. The slower-moving benchmark most households use for actual budgeting is still Freddie Mac’s official weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey, last released Thursday, October 22, which put the 30-year fixed at 7.32%, down 8 basis points from the prior week’s 7.40%. That survey won’t update again until this Thursday, October 29, so it still reflects last week’s conditions rather than today’s small backup in yields.
For year-over-year context, Freddie Mac’s survey from roughly this same week in 2025 put the 30-year fixed at just 6.19%. Even after a week-over-week improvement in the official survey, rates remain well over a full percentage point above where they stood twelve months ago — a gap that becomes concrete once you translate it into an actual monthly payment, which is exactly what the next section does.
The Real Math: What Today’s Rate Actually Means for Your Payment
Percentages only mean something once you turn them into an actual mortgage payment, so let’s run the numbers on a $350,000 mortgage, a realistic loan size for a solid share of Grand Strand purchases, using the standard 30-year amortization formula rather than a rough estimate.
At today’s real-time tracker rate of 7.23%, the monthly principal and interest payment on that $350,000 loan comes to $2,382.87. Compare that to last week’s tracker reading of 7.32% from October 20, which would have put the same loan at $2,404.26 a month — meaning today’s buyer is paying about $21.39 less a month, or roughly $257 a year, than a buyer who locked in exactly a week earlier.
The more rigorous comparison uses Freddie Mac’s official weekly figures, since that survey is the one lenders and underwriters actually treat as the benchmark. At this week’s Freddie Mac rate of 7.32%, that same $350,000 loan runs $2,404.26 a month, versus $2,423.33 at last week’s 7.40% — a difference of $19.07 a month, or roughly $229 a year. The bigger number, as always, is the year-over-year comparison: at last year’s Freddie Mac rate of 6.19%, the identical loan would have cost just $2,141.37 a month, a gap of $262.89 more a month, or roughly $3,155 a year, from where rates sit today versus twelve months ago.
Run that same year-over-year comparison on a $500,000 loan, a size plenty of buyers relocating from pricier markets are used to carrying, and the gap widens to $375.55 more a month, or roughly $4,507 a year — larger in dollar terms, since every basis point of rate movement costs more as the loan amount climbs. That loan-size comparison is itself a useful planning number for anyone trying to understand what buying a home in Myrtle Beach will actually cost month to month at different price points.
Why Buying a Home in Myrtle Beach Still Makes Sense Heading Into Fed Week
A tech-led rally and a Fed meeting widely expected to end in a hold can make the rate backdrop feel more settled than it is day to day, but the more durable story for anyone focused on buying a home in Myrtle Beach is what more than a year of elevated borrowing costs has already done to this market. Fewer buyers can comfortably qualify at rates still in the low-to-mid 7% range, which means less competition for well-priced listings, homes sitting longer on the market, and sellers considerably more willing to negotiate than during the ultra-low-rate years. Price reductions, closing-cost credits, and seller-funded rate buydowns remain realistically on the table for a well-prepared buyer, and that leverage doesn’t evaporate just because one day’s bond-market jitters push rates a few basis points higher ahead of a Fed decision.
South Carolina’s broader cost of living does a lot of quiet work here too. The loan-size comparison above makes the point plainly: the identical rate move costs a $500,000 borrower noticeably more than a $350,000 borrower, even though the percentage move is exactly the same. A smaller typical loan amount is a genuine cushion against rate volatility, and it’s one of the clearest advantages of shopping the Grand Strand rather than a comparably sized home in a higher-cost part of the country, where the same rate swing stings far more simply because the underlying loan amounts tend to be larger to begin with. Browse what’s currently available along the coast to get a feel for what today’s rates and prices translate to in real, available listings.
What Fed Week Means for Buyers Watching From the Sidelines
A nearly 1.2% gain in the Nasdaq, a volatility index that fell back below 18, and a Fed decision landing tomorrow afternoon add up to a market that’s cautiously optimistic without being complacent. The practical approach that holds up no matter which way tomorrow’s announcement breaks remains familiar: marry the house, date the rate. Buy the right home at a price today’s market supports, and refinance later if rates come down further once the Fed and this week’s wave of Big Tech earnings have had their say.
Getting pre-approved now, before you’ve settled on a specific property, remains one of the most useful moves available in a market like this. It swaps a confusing headline percentage for your actual rate and budget, and puts you in position to move decisively the moment a motivated seller is ready to talk, regardless of which direction tomorrow’s statement nudges daily rate trackers.
A day with a tech-led rally, a volatility index back under 18, and a mortgage rate still running below where it sat a week ago, even with today’s small uptick, is on balance a reasonably encouraging setup for anyone focused on buying a home in Myrtle Beach. The bottom line: today’s rate math is still better than it was two weeks ago, the cost-of-living advantage versus pricier markets held up even as Wall Street’s attention shifted to Fed week and a parade of Big Tech earnings, and the negotiating leverage built up over a year of elevated rates remains squarely on the buyer’s side heading into Wednesday’s decision.
If you’d like help running these numbers for your own situation, connect with our team and we’ll walk through exactly what today’s rates and your specific loan amount mean for your budget, rather than leaving you to guess from a single day’s headlines.