The Day Ahead: Marginally More Active, but Still Waiting on Wednesday

By: Matthew Graham

With no major domestic or overseas economic data on tap and no game-changing headlines expected, yesterday's excruciatingly slow session may well have been in the cards.  By that same rationale, today's session should also be slow, even if not quite in the same league as Monday.  The only real differences are in the quantity of European economic reports and the beginning of the US Treasury Auction cycle.  Even though the latter sounds like it might be worth perking up over, we have yet to see a 3yr Auction "matter" since Fed Funds Rates hit 0-25, let alone since the verbiage change in August 2011. 

That said, we're cognizant that times, they are a-changin' with respect to feeling out the eventual curtailment of QE and indefinitely low Fed rates (the collective 'stuff' that effectively anchors the short end of the yield curve, rendering short term auctions less meaningful to the longer end of the yield curve that's more in tune with mortgage rates).  So we can't help but start to treat 2 and 3yr auctions as "fire drills" for future auction vigilance.  More to the point, the entirety of Tuesday's session is similarly "going through the motions" until the meatier bits of the econ and event calendar arrive on Wednesday with Retail Sales and the 10yr Auction.  Tuesday's events, by contrast would have to be relatively more shocking to move the needle.

The following charts of 10yr Treasuries are from yesterday morning, but perfectly intact today as well, consider yesterday's lack of movement:

and a new one for today with post-roll 3.0s showing "decision time" right around the 102-00 level

MBS Live Econ Calendar:

Week Of Mon, Mar 11 2013 - Fri, Mar 15 2013

Time

Event

Period

Unit

Forecast

Prior

Mon, Mar 11

00:00

No Significant Data Scheduled

--

--

--

--

Tue, Mar 12

13:00

3-Yr Note Auction

--

bl

32.0

--

14:00

Federal budget, $

Feb

bl

-228.00

3.00

Wed, Mar 13

07:00

Mortgage refinance index

w/e

--

--

4712.4

07:00

Mortgage market index

w/e

--

--

864.1

08:30

Export prices mm

Feb

%

0.0

0.3

08:30

Import prices mm

Feb

%

0.6

0.6

08:30

Retail sales mm

Feb

%

0.5

0.1

10:00

Business inventories mm

Jan

%

0.3

0.1

13:00

10yr Treasury Auction

--

bl

21.0

--

Thu, Mar 14

08:30

Producer prices mm

Feb

%

0.7

0.2

08:30

Producer prices, core mm

Feb

%

0.2

0.2

08:30

Current account

Q4

bl

-112.5

-107.5

08:30

Initial Jobless Claims

w/e

k

350

340

13:00

30-Yr Treasury auction

--

bl

13.0

--

Fri, Mar 15

08:30

Core CPI mm, sa

Feb

%

0.1

0.3

08:30

CPI mm, sa

Feb

%

0.6

0.0

08:30

NY Fed manufacturing

Mar

--

10.00

10.04

09:15

Industrial output mm

Feb

%

0.4

-0.1

09:15

Capacity utilization mm

Feb

%

79.3

79.1

09:55

U.Mich sentiment

Mar

--

77.5

77.6

* mm: monthly | yy: annual | qq: quarterly | "w/e" in "period" column indicates a weekly report

* Q1: First Quarter | Adv: Advance Release | Pre: Preliminary Release | Fin: Final Release

* (n)SA: (non) Seasonally Adjusted

* PMI: "Purchasing Managers Index"