Heading into this week, we were well within our right to expect things to be slow for financial markets.  Christmas is on Friday.  Thursday is a half day.  Anyone who is doing much work will be done by Wednesday.  But even with all of the above, today still managed to be surprisingly slow from a trading standpoint.  Volumes were very close to matching November 27th (the day after Thanksgiving)--something that normally doesn't happen on a full business day.

The consequence of the slowness was that we had a modest amount of volatility, albeit inside a narrow range.  Bonds also marched to their own beat, for the most part, eschewing much of the typical correlations with other markets. 

Analysis is generally moot on days like today.  The almost perfectly unchanged closing levels add emphasis to that fact.  Things pick up a bit tomorrow in terms of economic data, but it remains to be seen if that will translate to much volume or momentum.

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
100-05 : -0-01
FNMA 3.5
103-08 : +0-00
FNMA 4.0
105-25 : -0-01
Treasuries
2 YR
0.9570 : +0.0010
10 YR
2.1970 : +0.0000
30 YR
2.9150 : -0.0100
Pricing as of 12/21/15 6:43PMEST
Today's Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
1:49PM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Slight Increase in Negative Reprice Risk
10:46AM  :  Here's What Holiday Trading Looks Like
MBS Live Chat Highlights
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
Tim McNerney  :  "some of the LOCAL offices don;t say on the irs.gov website that they provide the transcripts and they also say they don't provide telephone assistance to confirm either"
John Tassios  :  "I would do both. On my prev customers, they requested to be faxed, and also to be mailed too. but, make sure FAX # belongs to the customer. IRS runs some kind of ph trace to see who fax # belongs to."
john vo  :  "Yes, you can get it on the same day if you walked into the IRS office. I had a same problem last week and made the borrower go to the IRS office"
Tim McNerney  :  "JT---so if they call the ID THEFT line and stay on phone your saying an option is to have the IRS fax them to the borrower in lieu of mailing?"
Steve Chizmadia  :  "Or you can call a IRS fraud line and be on hold for a while and if the customer is on the line with them IRS may fax the transcripts"
Tim McNerney  :  "can the borrower WALK IN to the IRS locally and get them same day?"
Eric Weishaar  :  "Yes several in the last couple of months."
Steve Chizmadia  :  "Trip to the local IRS office may be in order"
Steve Chizmadia  :  "Yes Tim"
Tim McNerney  :  "anyone had multiple IRS rejections due top potential ID Theft"
Hugh W. Page  :  "Laugh for the day - I have an old Prequal App form I used to use and a borrower got it from somewhere and sent it to me. I had a question on there asking them to "Rate your Credit History". This borrower checks the box "Excellent" and then proceeds to comment, "Credit History is great besides 1 foreclosure.""