In the context of this week's range, today has been well-contained and fairly mild in terms of volatility. After hitting the best levels of the week yesterday morning following Retail Sales, yields began edging up in linear fashion and continued that trend through the overnight session. It would have continued unabated were it not for a shockingly bad Producer Price Index this morning. But even that proved to be only a temporary stumbling block for the determination to get back to the resistance levels in place from before Wednesday's 10yr auction.
This is something that bond markets do from time to time. After trading up against a technical level, an event or headline will cause the level to break and a combination of momentum and/or more data/events will keep things moving in the direction of the break. Then once that move is exhausted, it's not uncommon to see a security refill the gap back to the previous technical level. This is basically what happened this week with the 10yr auction and Retail Sales the next morning. A picture might help:
So we're left with 2.13+ and 2.09 as the bookends for this Friday. MBS are keeping normal pace with the Treasury move and are also a few ticks improved day-over-day. There is nothing else of major significance on the calendar for today, so it would be up to an unexpected headline or some high-conviction shift in tradeflows to change things between now and the close. Cruise control until further notice.
MBS | FNMA 3.0 101-07 : +0-03 | FNMA 3.5 104-08 : +0-03 | FNMA 4.0 106-14 : +0-01 |
Treasuries | 2 YR 0.6490 : -0.0150 | 10 YR 2.1030 : -0.0070 | 30 YR 2.6880 : -0.0060 |
Pricing as of 3/13/15 12:25PMEST |