Long Term Trends in MBS Unaffected by Today's Roll

Late this afternoon, it's time once again to retire the current month's crop of Fannie and Freddie 30yr Fixed MBS.  While the drop in prices between March coupons and April's will look like negative on charts, it's all part of the process and MBS are actually trading well in general, holding a fairly steady distance from benchmarks in terms of yield.  The underlying steady demand, along with considerations relating to the settlement process have kept MBS remarkably even-keeled today.  

(source: MBS Live)

Although the MBS prices seem to be all over the place in the chart above, they are indeed in a very narrow range in the bigger picture.  The next chart has two looks at broader time frames.  In these contexts, you'll be able to see how much movement the past two days account for by observing the height of the most recent two candlesticks (and of course also observing that said height is relatively shorter than most other candlesticks).  I also threw in a line to mark where prices would be after the roll if it happened right now.  Bottom line, even if we remain in weaker territory, the long term trends are unlikely to be threatened by Today's movement alone.

It should be noted, that I'd consider long term trends to be moving more sideways than up at the moment.  Even though today is a down day for bond markets and an up day for stocks, everything has been mostly sideways in February and March.  Stocks and Treasuries have both moved back and forth across the midpoint of their range since the last NFP Report.  If today's 4pm deadline for the Greek bond swap and tomorrow morning's NFP combine to negative effect for bond markets, our first concerns for a shift away from a sideways trend is a break of the 2.04's with more pronounced concern at 2.07+ and 2.10.