MBS Week Ahead: Important Week For Bond Markets, Mostly Focused on the Fed

This week's headliner will be Wednesday afternoon's FOMC Announcement.  While this isn't one of the Fed Announcements that includes the economic projections and the Yellen press conference, it is notable because it must address the end of QE3.  Most market participants expect the Fed to pull the trigger on ending asset purchases at this meeting.  Even if that doesn't happen, it would still need to be addressed considering the linear reduction in the previous meetings.

The rest of the week's calendar is respectable in its own right.  European markets will be reacting to bank stress test news today and tomorrow.  There are several relatively important pieces of economic data including GDP.  Finally, Treasury auctions and "month-end" will add another layer of complexity to the trading  as they elicit tradeflows that are independent of economic fundamentals and headlines.

It's also an interesting week for bond markets purely from a technical standpoint.  In other words, the trading levels themselves are important, regardless of the economic data.  Of course the data can affect trading levels, but the point is that the levels themselves can act as another source of motivation for trading.  For instance, the two horizontal lines in the chart below will be lines in the sand for most traders, either prompting further weakness or a buying opportunity.  Of the two, 2.34 is the more significant.