During all but the first few hours of the overnight session, US bond markets were under pressure today. It wasn't too terrible though. The initial motivation for the weakness was the fact that the European bond market rally finally had to come up for air. It had been rallying aggressively since Fed day, and was nearly back to August's low yields this morning (only 4-5bps away). For the sake of comparison, 10yr Treasuries are more than 20bps away from their late August lows.
European bond markets never made any overly-threatening moves back in the other direction, but that didn't stop US bond markets from continuing to drift into higher rates. By the 10am hour, it looked like we might have been shaping up for a pretty rotten day.
At 1030am, the weekly oil inventory data came out, sending oil prices tumbling. Stocks and bonds did as little as they could to acknowledge the move, but that was enough to help MBS and Treasuries establish support for the rest of the day. The net effect was the narrowest trading ranges since pre-Fed Wednesday of last week.
MBS | FNMA 3.0 100-26 : -0-04 | FNMA 3.5 103-30 : -0-04 | FNMA 4.0 106-15 : -0-03 |
Treasuries | 2 YR 0.6990 : +0.0210 | 10 YR 2.1530 : +0.0210 | 30 YR 2.9480 : +0.0050 |
Pricing as of 9/23/15 4:36PMEST |