Much like yesterday, bond markets experienced a somewhat abrupt intraday swing that lacked overt motivation. This time, however, rates were heading in a more friendly direction with 10's ultimately dropping to 1.879 and Fannie 3.0s up 10 ticks to 101-29.again, we don't have much by way of gigantic, obvious motivations. So let's start going down the list and see what we find.
While motivations weren't necessarily overt, we still have a list of likely suspects. These include losses in oil and stocks as well as an almost complete evaporation in corporate debt issuance. Beyond that, it's good to remember that this is a holiday-shortened week and traders are scurrying to make the trades they need to make before taking off tomorrow afternoon.
In fact, the holiday week theme may be one of the best ways to think about the past 2 days of trading. Before that, Monday got things kicked off on a weaker note, but yields were nonetheless holding under the important 1.92% pivot point. Then yesterday's Belgian terror attacks and massive corporate bond issuance made for a bit of a curveball. With today's yields closing right in line with last Friday's, it's starting to look more like a holiday week, complete with a characteristically inexplicable spike and nearly as perplexing bounce back to unchanged levels on the week.
MBS | FNMA 3.0 101-29 : +0-08 | ||
Treasuries | 10 YR 1.8790 : -0.0560 | ||
Pricing as of 3/23/16 6:39PMEST |