Fri, Mar 20 2015, 4:58 PM
It was a calm and light trading day right from the outset today. Without options expirations, volume would have been the lowest of the year in bond...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 7:34 AM
First of all, there is no true "non-Fed-related" way to look at yesterday's rally. For US markets, it had almost everything to do with the Fed. But ...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 4:18 PM
It's always a bit disheartening when the day after an awesome rally ends up erasing a good-sized chunk of the gains. That was the case today as the c...
Thu, Mar 19 2015, 1:38 PM
The day began well enough, with only moderate weakness in domestic bond markets. Moreover, 10yr yields were doing a great job of holding on to import...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 12:29 PM
Domestic bond markets began the day in stronger territory, and you can tell they're not too happy about it. If Treasuries and MBS had their way, th...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 7:34 AM
Today is Fed day and naturally, that's where 100% of the focus has been and will be. Markets are convinced that the Fed will remove the word "patient...
Wed, Mar 18 2015, 5:23 PM
Most of what would have been written to recap today's events was accidentally written this morning before they happened. The article I'm referring to...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 7:34 AM
The sense that financial markets are circling the wagons in preparation for tomorrow's FOMC events is palpable. Yesterday ended up being the lightes...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 4:56 PM
What a boring 3 days! The only thing that's happened for bond markets is an utterly mechanical trend back toward Thursday morning's low yields and/or...
Tue, Mar 17 2015, 1:01 PM
As expected, not much is going on today as the focus remains on tomorrow's FOMC events. Overnight volumes and participation levels were light for the...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 11:00 AM
It's been an uneventful day so far for bond markets, but a noticeably stronger one. The overnight session got thing off to a positive start as Treasu...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 7:34 AM
It's an easy answer to be sure, but this time it's probably the best one. Financial markets, and especially bonds, stand the best chance to be inspir...
Mon, Mar 16 2015, 4:24 PM
The most important thing to understand about today's market movements is that by writing this sentence (or reading it, in your case), we've already gi...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 12:26 PM
In the context of this week's range, today has been well-contained and fairly mild in terms of volatility. After hitting the best levels of the wee...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 7:33 AM
Time for bond markets to start thinking even more seriously than they already are. 2014 and Jan 2015 were great. No complaints! We rode the epic w...
Fri, Mar 13 2015, 4:28 PM
Bond market trading drove home the point that the current week was over today and that it had been over ever since the post-Retail Sales rally failed ...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 12:55 PM
It's been a mostly good morning for bond markets. The overnight session saw modest gains during European hours, and Treasuries even managed to hold...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 7:34 AM
There have been no significant instances of economic data this week until today. These sorts of things happen, and it's usually Thursday that ends up...
Thu, Mar 12 2015, 5:15 PM
Trading levels began the day in better territory this morning after a strong overnight session for Treasuries. It wasn't so much that they gained a...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 7:34 AM
The first two days of this week were "nice." They got us back in line with what had been the weakest levels of the year before last Friday. In oth...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 5:08 PM
German Bunds dropped to yet another new all-time low today, hitting 0.193 at one point. The Euro plummeted and stocks sold modestly. All of the ab...
Wed, Mar 11 2015, 1:21 PM
Today's 10yr auction was pretty good , although it required a bit of weakness leading up to it in order to generate the relatively strong result. Th...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 12:52 PM
Some magical combination of new QE tradeflows and Greek drama (surprisingly enough) has driven German Bund yields well into new all-time lows today. ...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 7:34 AM
It ended up being interesting that the focus of yesterday's Week Ahead was the absence of data leaving us with a less obstructed view of traders' inte...
Tue, Mar 10 2015, 5:29 PM
First, a quick point of order: remember that tonight is "the roll" for Fannie and Freddie 30yr Fixed MBS. That means March coupons will stop tradin...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 12:59 PM
It's hard to know where to start discussing today's market activity, largely because today's market activity never really started . Ever since t...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 7:33 AM
Over the years, I've frequently gone back to the "limited data" theme on certain weeks where there is--well... limited data. The reason to mention/di...
Mon, Mar 9 2015, 5:20 PM
On the morning after 'springing forward,' we could forgive a bit of confusion or a bit of fatigue as folks who use archaic alarms may have been runnin...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 12:32 PM
What is a dip-buyer? That's just a fancy term for an investor who has seen prices fall far enough to entice them to buy in the hopes of a bounce. It...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 7:34 AM
For nearly a year, NFP hadn't mattered . That is to say, it ceased filling it's usual role as big-picture guidance giver. It was no longer setting ...
Fri, Mar 6 2015, 6:16 PM
We've been tracking a package from the BLS and new it was getting close as of Wednesday morning's major focus on employment metrics. Today we heard t...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 7:32 AM
When the ECB (European Central Bank) officially announced quantitative easing in January, they were pretty light on the details. At least that's true...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 4:46 PM
Today's ECB press conference and QE details were indeed a hotly anticipated item, and they caused quite a stir for European bond markets (right where ...
Thu, Mar 5 2015, 1:20 PM
Relative to its potential, today's release of ECB QE details turned out to inspire only modest volatility. Compared to an average day, however, the s...
Wed, Mar 4 2015, 12:39 PM
This morning's trading has been refreshingly straightforward. In fact, it's about as straightforward as it gets. Bond markets are clearly quite focu...
Wed, Mar 4 2015, 7:01 AM
Tue, Mar 3 2015, 12:38 PM
Anyone who's not talking about this week's rate movements in the context of the big Actavis corporate bond offering is missing the point . It was ...
Tue, Mar 3 2015, 7:33 AM
Yesterday morning, bond traders held off on more meaningful selling until they could rule out a big miss in the ISM data. That would normally mean ...
Tue, Mar 3 2015, 4:26 PM
Bonds sold off again today amid a total absence of economic data and meaningful headlines. Tradeflows were left in control and the biggest considerat...
Mon, Mar 2 2015, 12:44 PM
In hindsight, this has turned out to be a simple morning for bond markets. That wasn't the case earlier when we could only guess at the likely culp...
Mon, Mar 2 2015, 7:34 AM
It's an exciting and dangerous time for US rates markets, full of risk and opportunity. For those of us who were closely watching trends in rates...
Mon, Mar 2 2015, 5:34 PM
Have you heard much about Actavis before today?
Me neither, but that sure changed quickly! Actavis is a big pharmaceutical company that annou...
Fri, Feb 27 2015, 7:34 AM
We're all a bit shaken up--us market watching types. Almost all of 2014 through January of 2015 was great, and now February has stuck out like a sore...
Fri, Feb 27 2015, 4:59 PM
Very little has changed between now and the mid-day update (read that HERE if you like). To recap, bonds started the day roughly in line with yes...
Fri, Feb 27 2015, 1:06 PM
The last trading day of the month has managed to be a total let-down to anyone looking for excitement. In terms of doing no further harm , it's been...
Thu, Feb 26 2015, 11:41 AM
The day began on a strong note with US bond markets led higher in price by an even stronger overnight move in Germany. Following the mornings' econom...
Thu, Feb 26 2015, 7:34 AM
Domestic bond markets had been getting pummeled for exactly 3 weeks before getting a break on Tuesday. Then yesterday, they confirmed they're not goi...
Thu, Feb 26 2015, 6:44 PM
For being a day that followed 2 sessions of gains in a month where 2 sessions of gains is nearly unheard of, today got off to a great start . There ...
Wed, Feb 25 2015, 12:59 PM
Although there was a brief move to the lows of the day just after the noon hour, MBS have been doing a fine job of holding almost all of the gains fro...