MBS Day Ahead: Fed Speakers, Including Bernanke in the Afternoon

If there is any reason for market participants to tune in today, it will be the late day speech from Bernanke.  That's not happening until 2:30pm however, and significant portion of the trading community will either be sidelines or greatly hindered by the snow storm in New York.  While yesterday morning brought mostly news of the inbound storm, the overnight hours brought the storm itself.  Traders are people too and some of them may not be interested in driving in a foot of snow on a holiday-week Friday with no significant data on the calendar.

That will leave trading levels once again resigned to following the compelling tradeflows.  In other words, the most meaningful trading motivations haven't been the economic fundamentals, but rather the simple observation of the biggest trades.  The "herd mentality" is evident in the charts below.  Individualism should ramp up again next week with Friday's Nonfarm Payrolls report.

Fannie 4.0 MBS (top) and 10yr Treasury Yields (bottom).

The key point with this chart isn't so much about the recent consolidation, but more to do with the 2 months of fairly linear trending regardless of the moments where economic fundamentals suggested a breakout.

S&P Futures (blue) overlaid with 10yr Treasury yields

This is pretty straightforward and simply shows a renewed connection between stocks and bonds.  This correlation can suggest "asset allocation" trading where investors are buying one to sell the other and vice versa.  Asset allocation trading is another form of a "tradeflow consideration" that can outweigh economic reports.