It was a rough morning for bond markets as Treasuries have really only moved in one direction since opening in Europe .  Losses were quite livable during those overnight hours, but they picked up as the domestic session began.  The key culprit was, and continues to be an influx of new corporate bond deals.  Much like Treasury auctions (which traders are also wary about this week), these add extra supply to the overall bond market.  The increased competition for investor demand typically puts pressure on prices.  The problem is compounded by the fact that Treasuries can be sold in order to protect against rising rates during the corporate issuance process.

The corporate issuance selling is further compounded by a tradeflow correction that was already underway.  This simply means that Thursday afternoon and Friday saw a capitulative rally in bond markets where anyone who'd been betting on rates moving higher was instead forced to buy bonds.  Now those traders are more flexible/nimble.  As they come into the current week, they are confronted with the corporate issuance, the looming Treasury auction cycle, and Fed speakers that are pushing back on last week's dovish stance (as expected).  So the choice is clear for them to sell.  It will be interesting and important to watch how far this selling trend goes and how long it lasts.

For now, it's caused roughly 3/8ths of a point of weakness in MBS and a 7bp rise in 10yr yields.  If you hear anyone talking about how today's weakness is primarily Fed related, kindly correct them by pointing out that 2yr yields are only up 3.63.  They'd be leading the charge if this selling was due to Fed rate hike expectations.


MBS Pricing Snapshot
Pricing shown below is delayed, please note the timestamp at the bottom. Real time pricing is available via MBS Live.
MBS
FNMA 3.0
100-20 : -0-13
FNMA 3.5
103-27 : -0-10
FNMA 4.0
106-13 : -0-07
Treasuries
2 YR
0.7140 : +0.0363
10 YR
2.2050 : +0.0714
30 YR
3.0220 : +0.0879
Pricing as of 9/21/15 2:20PMEST

Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
12:28PM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Negative Reprices Now Becoming Probable
10:43AM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Negative Reprice Risk Increasing
9:48AM  :  Corporate Issuance Adds to Position-Squaring Bounce

Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
John Tassios  :  "Past 3 + years of FED QE money has propped up US Stocks, Commodities,EM markets, Chinese stocks, China, Corp Bond Issuance, M&A activity. Very little went to actual GDP growth or wage growth, or productivity growth. It did help bring in spreads from various risk assets vs TSY's. The problem now is when FED starts to raise rates, it will open up a new unleashing of capital outflows from EM's & China, widen spreads to risk assets, risk of Stock selloff in EM's & China that will spread to the US stocks, and a reduction in bank lending due to flat or inverted yield curve. The USD will soar, and commodities sell off. The FED can't say all of the above, so they watered down to smt that mentioned lack World Growth as generic reference in stmt. Just my 2 cents."
Matthew Graham  :  "I think we're right back where we were 4 or 5 months ago when we were puzzled as to their seemingly burning desire to hike for what seemed like no good reason. I think they want to hike for some reason that they're not talking too much about, but the actual data and economic landscape make it hard to justify. "
Hugh W. Page  :  "I think the Fed is really blowing it. Now they march out the Fed members over the weekend saying, "but, but we still might probably raise this year". They are blowing their credibility every time the message changes."
Matthew Graham  :  ""let's make policy decisions based on stuff that hasn't happened yet, but that we think will probably happen." Seems weird to me."
Matthew Graham  :  "yes, it's not an invalid connection, but it was utterly speculative--just like the previous notion that inflation would resume because job growth was strong."
Andy Pada, Jr.  :  "MG, last week we seemed to place a lot of attention on the Fed's third mandate of "global weakness." Isn't this a bit exaggerated? Isn't it "global weakness" as it may relate to our inflation?"