MBS MID-DAY: Bonds Let Guard Down After no Yellen Bombshells

By: Matthew Graham

There are a lot of moving parts to today's movement, and most of them working in synergy to benefit bond markets.  The day began with Greece getting their list of reforms submitted to the Eurogroup overnight.  This made for a moderate amount of weakness as markets assumed it would be approved (because the fact that Greece was getting a sneak peak at how the document would be received is the only good explanation for their delay in submitting it yesterday).  The most important part of the market reaction was the fact that European bond markets continued to hold their supportive ceiling.

That paved the way for US bond markets to continue tightening back up to German Bunds--a process that began last Wednesday, but that got a healthy dose of confirmation yesterday.  All that remained was to rule out any negative surprises from Yellen's congressional testimony. 

As the testimony Q&A progressed, bonds inched into stronger territory, staging right on the important technical level at 2.04.  Milliseconds after Shelby began bringing the testimony to a close, bonds were off to the races, making today the strongest since late January.  10's are down to 1.99 and Fannie 3.0s are up nearly half a point to 101-27.

Bottom line: today's testimony was an important short-term motivation that played out against the more important backdrop of global bond markets.  If German Bunds had been freaking out this morning, we may well not be seeing this much positivity in US bonds markets. 


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
101-25 : +0-12
FNMA 3.5
104-23 : +0-10
FNMA 4.0
106-26 : +0-06
Treasuries
2 YR
0.5650 : -0.0410
10 YR
1.9980 : -0.0630
30 YR
2.6060 : -0.0520
Pricing as of 2/24/15 1:17PMEST

Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
12:26PM  :  Bonds Challenging Technical Resistance, Rallying Now
10:17AM  :  Back in Black (sort of)
10:03AM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Negative Reprice Risk Rapidly Increases as Yellen Speech Released
9:35AM  :  Bond Markets Under Modest Pressure as Greek Deal Passes Eurogroup Hurdle

Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- YELLEN SAYS CHANGE IN FORWARD GUIDANCE SHOULD BE SEEN AS REFLECTING COMMITTEE'S VIEW THAT IT'S AT THE POINT WHERE A RATE HIKE COULD OCCUR AT ANY MEETING"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - YELLEN SAYS CHANGE IN FORWARD GUIDANCE SHOULD NOT BE READ AS INDICATING FED WILL RAISE RATES IN A COUPLE OF MEETINGS"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - FED'S YELLEN SAYS IF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS CONTINUE TO IMPROVE, COMMITTEE WILL CONSIDER RATE HIKE ON MEETING-BY-MEETING BASIS, PRECEDED BY A CHANGE IN FORWARD GUIDANCE"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- FED CHAIR YELLEN SAYS FED POLICY-SETTING COMMITTEE BELIEVES IT'S UNLIKELY ECONOMIC CONDITIONS WILL WARRANT A RATE HIKE FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT COUPLE OF COMMITTEE MEETINGS"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - US FEBRUARY CONSUMER CONFIDENCE INDEX 96.4 (CONSENSUS 99.6) VS JANUARY REVISED 103.8 (PREVIOUS 102.9) - CONFERENCE BOARD"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- US DECEMBER 20-METRO AREA HOME PRICES +4.5 PCT (CONSENSUS +4.3 PCT) FROM YEAR AGO -- CASE-SHILLER"
Matthew Graham  :  " REUTERS POLL-U.S. HOUSING MARKET SEEN GAINING MOMENTUM IN 2015, DESPITE HIGHER MORTGAGE RATES"
Matthew Graham  :  "As expected, it's having a negative impact on bond markets, but so far, it's been much worse for European bond markets."
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - EU COMMISSION LETTER TO EUROGROUP SAYS GREEK LETTER "SUFFICIENTLY COMPREHENSIVE TO BE VALID STARTING POINT FOR A SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF REVIEW""