MBS MID-DAY: Rally Pulls Back After Fuel Dries up

By: Matthew Graham

It's been a pretty simple trading session.  Overall, participation remains much lower than normal, but has picked up from Friday's levels (which were the lowest of 2014).  Much of the increased activity was a factor of an even busier trading day in Europe. 

Greek parliament failed to elect a new President, thus necessitating a new national election.  Markets knew this was a risk, but it wasn't a sure thing.  The frontrunner in the new national election is Tsipras, who's not a fan of EU-imposed austerity measures and whose brinksmanship almost forced a Greek Eurozone exit in 2012.  Expectations have been drifting toward a similar outcome this time around.

The market-based results are similar as well with German Bund yields reaching a new record low today.  Treasuries followed the direction of the move (lower in yield), but only halfheartedly.  Once European markets closed for the day, US bond markets (including MBS), reversed course and are now back in line with opening levels.  Thankfully, opening levels were moderately stronger than Friday's closing levels, but only be an eighth of a point in MBS. 


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
100-31 : +0-06
FNMA 3.5
104-02 : +0-04
FNMA 4.0
106-19 : +0-03
Treasuries
2 YR
0.7160 : -0.0273
10 YR
2.2220 : -0.0296
30 YR
2.7910 : -0.0263
Pricing as of 12/29/14 2:02PMEST

Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
10:07AM  :  Greece is Back, but Only Modest Benefit for US Bond Markets

Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
Matthew Graham  :  "resistance levels I think you mean. 2.15 for sure"
David Lurvey  :  "MG do we have any support levels before 2.11?"
Matthew Graham  :  "maybe slightly more than average in the short term. Over time, of course, stocks and bonds have rallied together. Interestingly enough, before 9:30am, the stock lever was fairly well connected. The 9:30am change is typically a housekeeping move (not organic trading momentum, but rather, positional adjustments due to the market opening). It's only organic "risk-on/risk-off" trading (which includes "asset allocation") that perpetuates the stock lever. Beyond all that, I would also say that it doesn't make much sense to pay too much attention to such things today or this time of year."
Frank Hanna  :  "why is the stock level our friend as of late?"
Hugh W. Page  :  "What's equally as crazy is 2 yr Bunds are negative in yield and you get a whopping 5 bps or so at 5 yrs. Crazy"
Jeff Anderson  :  "Probably what's helping us the most today, AP. I'll take it."
Andy Pada, Jr.  :  "fresh new lows on the 10 YR Bund today."