A few charts for the afternoon... First, we'll take a look at a short term chart of 10yr note yields vs the S&P index. It's fairly common that we see vary degrees of connection between 10yr yields and stock prices. This morning provided a good opportunity to observe a potential technical support level around 1.90 in 10yr yields. Stocks and bonds had been tracking fairly well, but as you can see in the chart below, as the day progressed, 10's continued to hold fairly sideways even though stocks rallied:
The longer term chart has a good clue as to where 1.90 comes from. It also gives us a chance to look at what seems to be the dominant trend of lower yields still very much intact (broken briefly with a knee-jerk reaction to the latest FOMC, but not confirmed). This should provide some context for experiencing any more weakness this week. As you can see, we could be well up into the 2's before the broader trend of improvement is threatened:
And as far as MBS are concerned, they should continue to fare better than Treasuries into such weakness. Opinions vary, but it's likely that the Fed's most recent commitment to MBS effectively put an end to the recent (and rampant) widening of MBS Yields vs Treasury Yields. Here's a look at 10yr yields vs MBS 3.5 Yields breaking it's recent uptrend and on the verge of moving past an inflection point:
Charts like the following provide glimpses of how this tightening plays out in real time. If we want to anthropromorph the markets, we could say that MBS "appreciate" the previously discussed ability of 10yr yields to hold firm today, and thus have grown a bit more confident this afternoon. It's just an opportunity for spreads to tighten up a bit as a more stable trading range in 10's is generally good for production MBS. Long story short, when 10's are flat, and MBS are doing what they're doing in the following chart, everything seems to be working like it's supposed to...