MBS MID-DAY: Quiet Morning, but Solid Performance From Bond Markets

By: Matthew Graham •

Both MBS and Treasuries are trading in just slightly better territory than Friday's best levels.  That's really about all there is to say about today.  There's been no meaningful data or headlines.  News of a bailout for Portugal's Banco Espirito Santo looked like it might have been important, but market movement hasn't concurred.

Essentially, Treasuries drifted sideways overnight and have been moderately positive so far in the domestic session.  MBS opened flat and have similarly been improving.  One of the only correlations to observe is that stocks have moved mostly lower over the same time. 

The S&P is now back in line with Friday's 4pm levels after initially moving higher overnight.  10yr yields are down 3.2bps at 2.473 and Fannie 3.5s are up 6 ticks at 102-15.

MBS Pricing Snapshot
Pricing shown below is delayed, please note the timestamp at the bottom. Real time pricing is available via MBS Live.
MBS
FNMA 3.0
98-20 : +0-06
FNMA 3.5
102-15 : +0-06
FNMA 4.0
105-21 : +0-06
Treasuries
2 YR
0.4683 : -0.0077
10 YR
2.4708 : -0.0342
30 YR
3.2741 : -0.0219
Pricing as of 8/4/14 11:36AMEST
Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
9:06AM  :  Bond Markets Moderately Stronger to Start Domestic Session
Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
John Tassios  :  "Speaking from my own personal point of view. I have pulled back myself from what I used to spend, or invest etc in years past. Our industry has slowed down too, so that is a part of it, but in the back of my mind, I am a lot more frugal,conservative thinking with my finances than ever before in the past."
John Tassios  :  "I think this was such a deep downturn in 2008-2009, that is has changed the "psyche" of most consumers and business to be more conservative and pull back, and be in more cash transactions than ever before."
Victor Burek  :  "I think you can point to one thing...wages"
John Tassios  :  "Agreed MG on your last 2 comments and VB's point too. But, this recovery still does not "feel" like a recovery ( s ) of past cycles / past years. Can't really just point to one thing but it has been a very slow , mixed econ data, at best. Bond market is sensing this too. Just my opinion on this comment"
Matthew Graham  :  "I don't think the jobs numbers were that bad; fairly good actually. With revisions to previous months, we barely missed the forecast, and as Vic pointed out, it was the first time since the 90's that payrolls were over 200k for 6 consecutive months."
Thomas Counsell  :  "Haha--true. I'll be interested to see the revision though. Watch it be 50-60k higher."
Matthew Graham  :  "my official thesis on conspiracy theories from the last major discussion in Feb: "it's fun to talk about for kicks, but highly unlikely. And the best thing you could say about it if that is going on, is that they do a very poor job of manipulating to the desired effect. I could do much better if I could plug in a number.""
Thomas Counsell  :  "MG, pretty "crafty" jobs number on Friday, right?"
Matthew Graham  :  "JA, Portugal news was fairly-well expected I think"
Jeff Anderson  :  "Pretty tepid response the the Portugal bank news. Is Portugal the new Argentina?"