MBS Day Ahead: Sometimes You Have to Wait Before Really Finding Out

It's tempting to draw conclusions based on what seem like clear signals in markets.

Clearly stocks and bonds have been in tune with each other and stocks were clearly doing something different to start the week (clear enough that it was the topic of the morning commentary)

Clearly, Wednesday's rally was immense and stood a great chance to flush out a majority of short positions (folks betting on higher rates who were forced to capitulate during the snowball buying spree).

Clearly, we've been losing ground since then, and clearly stocks have been gaining ground at the same pace.  So the big, crazy move is clearly over and we're heading back in the other direction, right?

Not necessarily. 

The frustrating and wonderful thing about financial markets is that there are no absolutes when it comes to tomorrow's trading direction.  The mainstream technical indicators do indeed look more negative for bond markets at the moment, but one of the only historically similar periods of trading to the past month ended up defying that mainstream suggestion.  The interesting part is that markets would have to wait through several days of "rebound limbo" before really finding out that the rebound was just a head-fake.  This isn't to say that the same thing will happen this time--simply that we don't really know yet.