The Day Ahead: Winding Down and Range Finding; 2 Cool Charts

The bulk of the week's activity has passed, from a calendar standpoint, and this morning's Consumer Sentiment data is all that's left on the domestic agenda.  Even in the overnight session, there are no interesting data sets, and really, no data period, unless you consider Canadian CPI interesting (and we'd recommend against such perversion).  

These days tend to go one of two ways.  More often than not, after big sell-offs and moderate bounces like we've seen this week, these Friday's fizzle mostly sideways as long as the data doesn't get any snowballs rolling.  Occasionally, however, Sentiment data, and even other headlines can do just that.  So I guess that's Fizzle with a chance of snowballs?

Here are a few charts to help frame the trading day ahead.  First up, take a look at MBS. 

Fannie 3.0 30yr MBS

In The Chart Above: The dotted red line coincides mightily with the big swings seen in lender pricing over the past three days as well as early March (the only other time this year with similar pricing).  The days just to the other side of the line are surprisingly 'not even close' to as bad.  As such, we'd be keeping an eye on that 102-16 level, just in case we happen across any further selling today or next week.  To help maintain a healthy fear of selling, keep in mind that most options for charting intermediate term (around 6-9 months) are bearish.  Simple technicals are still bearish as well, as seen with the set of long to short moving averages on the chart (green/red crossing orange is an early signal while crossing purple is a bigger picture signal.  Even after Thursday's rally, everything's still under the purple line.  Just sayin...)

10 Yr Treasury Yields

In The Chart Above:  Here's another deceptively informative way of looking at things, as long as you're entertaining that we continue to be in a rates uptrend since last summer. If you remember where you were in May/June 2012, you might remember thinking 'surely, 10yr yields just bottomed now that we bounced hard at 1.44, right?'  It was a tempting thought and potentially accurate actually!  Even though yields snuck down into the 1.3's briefly, the modal low was irrefutably right around 1.44-1.45.  

The tightly coiled range near the center of the following trend channel may indeed have been an "old clue" as to where we were headed, or at least one option for where we'd head if something didn't throw the slope of 'recovery' (read: unwinding Fedspectations and EU fear) off course.  Combining that narrow range of yields with highs and lows no further into the future than the following 2 months gave us a range that's persisted now for an entire year.  Pretty crazy.  And if any of this is remotely true, then it would make sense to see yields right where they are after getting overheated in March, overcooled heading into May and seeking range neutrality ahead of a potentially informative set of Fed Minutes.