MBS Day Ahead: Calmest Day of the Week for Econ Data; Could Elections Matter?

By: Matthew Graham

I haven't mentioned mid-term elections until today, which is a pretty fair deal considering their potential market impact.  It may even be giving them too much credit, but alas, not much else is going on today.  It's the typical 'calm before the storm' Tuesday of an NFP week, which typically dovetails into ADP Wednesday and European Central Bank Announcements on Thursday.

Back to the point... Could elections matter?  If so, the most popular assessment seems to align stock gains and bond losses with a proliferation of GOP seats.  Truth be told, we can probably leave bonds out of this if/then scenario because equities markets are not only more likely to care, but also closer to an important technical breakout.  Bonds, on the other hand, look to have undergone and utterly mechanical correction following October's rally.

While there might be some influence on bond markets if stocks are moving big, there are more reliably correlated markets to watch in Europe.  With yesterday's big bounce just before noon coinciding with a European bond market bounce at the same time and two important central bank announcements coming up on Thursday, this makes even more sense.  Global markets look like they're gearing up for some ECB excitement given German Bunds' break away from the pack into the end of October.  US and UK 10yr yields (not directly affected by ECB policy) haven't taken the same lead off.


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
100-01 : +0-06
FNMA 3.5
103-13 : +0-05
FNMA 4.0
106-06 : +0-03
Treasuries
2 YR
0.5140 : -0.0030
10 YR
2.3160 : -0.0300
30 YR
3.0310 : -0.0360
Pricing as of 11/4/14 7:42AMEST

Tomorrow's Economic Calendar
Time Event Period Forecast Prior
Tuesday, Nov 04
8:30 International trade mm $ (bl)* Sep -40.0 -40.1
10:00 Factory orders mm (%) Sep -0.6 -10.1