Thu, Sep 17 2015, 12:39 PM
You've come a long way, baby. I don't remember when we first started incessantly focusing on the September Fed meeting as the deciding factor in the...
Thu, Sep 17 2015, 7:33 AM
More than any recent event--more than any silly old NFP report--today's FOMC events can and will move markets in a big way. It's not that markets are...
Thu, Sep 17 2015, 5:50 PM
Some folks thought the Fed would hike today and others were pretty sure they wouldn't. The hike camp was the minority according to most surveys and...
Wed, Sep 16 2015, 7:32 AM
It's pretty simple. 2015 is just like 2012-2013 , but replace the taper tantrum with the rate hike anxiety. Apart from that, things look eerily sim...
Wed, Sep 16 2015, 5:20 PM
Bond markets began the overnight session with a small corrective move back toward lower yields but flat-lined at 2.26 (10yr yields). Selling pressu...
Wed, Sep 16 2015, 1:28 PM
What is there to say about a day that has been so flat and uninteresting--especially compared to yesterday's craziness? Treasuries have essentially r...
Tue, Sep 15 2015, 10:06 AM
Financial markets exuded a distinct lack of inspiration yesterday, not unlike a concert audience when the opener is a band they've never heard of . S...
Tue, Sep 15 2015, 6:42 PM
Today saw a good, old-fashioned pre-Fed "lead off." Or perhaps that should be a BAD lead off, considering bond markets lost considerable ground. Whe...
Mon, Sep 14 2015, 12:48 PM
Bond markets were moderately strong overnight , both at home and abroad, but the gains left Treasuries and MBS well within the narrow range that has ...
Mon, Sep 14 2015, 7:33 AM
I heard a rather excitable radio personality refer to this week's FOMC meeting as the "most important central bank meeting in the history of monetary...
Mon, Sep 14 2015, 5:27 PM
It was a tediously calm Monday for bond markets, with one or two exceptions. The first would be that the overnight trading session did see a moderate...
Fri, Sep 11 2015, 12:20 PM
At yesterday's close, bond markets were once again pushing the upper limits of the pre-Fed range. As I discussed this morning , bond markets are ci...
Fri, Sep 11 2015, 7:33 AM
Everyone knows the Fed is considering hiking its target rate for the first time in 9 years , bringing it up from all-time lows for the first time in ...
Fri, Sep 11 2015, 4:38 PM
"What is the matrix?"
This could easily have been typed by an inquisitive bond market as it sought to better understand the mysteries of its own ex...
Thu, Sep 10 2015, 12:09 PM
Bond markets have been under modest pressure today with the focus again being on corporate debt issuance. Equities markets have played a supporting r...
Thu, Sep 10 2015, 7:33 AM
I was getting ready to write something for today's headline along the lines of "econ data merely a sideshow for supply." The point would have been th...
Thu, Sep 10 2015, 5:04 PM
Even as stock markets have only managed to recover half of their losses from yesterday, longer-maturity Treasuries have nearly retraced the entire m...
Wed, Sep 9 2015, 7:33 AM
One of the noticeable themes on the MBS Live dashboard yesterday was that of MBS ' outperformance .' In other words, MBS were holding steady to sligh...
Wed, Sep 9 2015, 5:41 PM
Today's trading session began with bonds in only slightly weaker territory. The overnight session brought general pressure from stronger global equit...
Wed, Sep 9 2015, 1:34 PM
It's the same old story for MBS: Treasuries are getting hit hard by supply pressure, both from fairly epic levels of corporate bond issuance and the r...
Tue, Sep 8 2015, 12:08 PM
NFP Friday saw bond markets make a weak attempt to break an extended sideways range. Today's trading activity has quickly ferried yields and prices ...
Tue, Sep 8 2015, 7:33 AM
Market participants had high hopes for last week's data. It stood a good chance to help inform the consensus on the Fed's upcoming policy announcemen...
Tue, Sep 8 2015, 5:31 PM
It was an exceptionally flat day for MBS with Fannie 3.5s holding between 103-24 and 103-27 for the entire session. More than 90% of today's trades...
Fri, Sep 4 2015, 7:20 AM
We've now made it through NFP week without having any "pre-NFP lead-off." That's the pattern we occasionally see where bond markets will quickly snow...
Fri, Sep 4 2015, 6:16 PM
There are no 2 ways about it: NFP was a non-event. Not only did it produce far less of a reaction when compared to other instances of NFP Fridays, it...
Fri, Sep 4 2015, 1:05 PM
The frustrating thing about today is that we can't really know if NFP came in at just the right levels to avoid stirring the pot too much, or if mar...
Thu, Sep 3 2015, 7:33 AM
Labor Day deserves its name on Wall Street and in Washington. It's hard to explain, but there's definitely some sense of "getting back to business" ...
Thu, Sep 3 2015, 6:08 PM
Miraculously (and sarcastically) bond markets were little-changed overnight. The first cues for movement came from the ECB's press conference where D...
Thu, Sep 3 2015, 1:09 PM
We're now far enough into the final pre-NFP day of the week to safely observe yet another instance of range-bound zigging and zagging . In other wor...
Wed, Sep 2 2015, 11:22 AM
By coming in at 190k vs a median forecast of 201k, today's ADP Employment data essentially abstained from strong comment on Friday's NFP. Because of ...
Wed, Sep 2 2015, 8:13 AM
Let's consider some facts. Not only did most of August see rates converging on the same micro range as yesterday (discussed in Day Ahead ), but ther...
Wed, Sep 2 2015, 5:52 PM
Another swing and another miss for today's economic data. It had an opportunity to kick start what stands a good chance to be a fairly big move in mu...
Tue, Sep 1 2015, 12:07 PM
Bond markets started the overnight session in better shape , already bouncing back from yesterday's weak closing levels. Data in China and Japan hel...
Tue, Sep 1 2015, 8:50 AM
US bond markets have an increasingly clear plan heading into the first 2 weeks of September: trade a narrow, consolidating range, centered on well-t...
Tue, Sep 1 2015, 6:35 PM
Today was a classic "inside day," meaning that the entire range of trading took place inside yesterday's trading range. As far as domestic hours ar...
Mon, Aug 31 2015, 8:51 AM
Amid last week's glut of Fed speeches surrounding the Jackson Hole symposium, Fed Vice Chair Fischer specifically called out "the next two weeks of da...
Mon, Aug 31 2015, 5:21 PM
Treasuries went out the 'in' door for the month of August, with today's 3pm levels matching the opening levels from August 3rd (1st trading day of the...
Mon, Aug 31 2015, 1:35 PM
The day started off well for domestic bond markets as weakness in Asia translated to some safe-haven demand for US Treasuries. At the start of the do...
Fri, Aug 28 2015, 8:21 AM
After rallying steadily for more than a month and after seeing that rally accelerate quickly into Monday afternoon, Treasuries and MBS underwent 2.5 d...
Fri, Aug 28 2015, 4:44 PM
I was writing reprice alerts and chatting with the MBS Live community during the time that I'd normally be writing the Mid-Day commentary. By the t...
Fri, Aug 28 2015, 1:15 PM
The very short version of a very long story is that bond markets are leveling-off within a range. Using the 10yr yield as a benchmark, that range...
Thu, Aug 27 2015, 11:29 AM
Much has been made recently of the surprising lack of response on the part of bond markets to the massive sell-off in stocks. That shoe is now on t...
Thu, Aug 27 2015, 7:32 AM
You'll see more and more of this in the coming days/weeks--the various iterations of "China dumping US Treasuries at an insane pace!" Oh no!
Wait...
Thu, Aug 27 2015, 4:44 PM
After two days of relatively brutal selling, bond markets finally opted for much less brutal selling. In fact, 10yr yields were in positive territo...
Wed, Aug 26 2015, 11:47 AM
Bigger-picture trading themes are still driving the bond market movement this week. Namely, bonds had been eager to consolidate more than a month of ...
Wed, Aug 26 2015, 7:33 AM
Recent volatility isn't just the product of illiquid summertime trading against the backdrop of surprising announcements from global central banks. M...
Wed, Aug 26 2015, 5:00 PM
Longer duration bonds got hit hard today. Case in point, 30yr bonds are up nearly 13bps while 5's are only up 6bps. The better performances in the...
Tue, Aug 25 2015, 11:45 AM
In financial markets, a flight-to-safety generally refers to investors moving out of riskier assets (like stocks, and certain commodities) and into sa...
Tue, Aug 25 2015, 7:32 AM
Given our focus on trends in mortgage rates, we often discuss lenders' intraday reprices. At the moment, however, there is an entirely different kin...
Tue, Aug 25 2015, 5:55 PM
Bond markets finally did what they've wanted to do for several sessions now: square up some of the trading positions from the recent rally. That ral...