MBS Week Ahead: Consistently Busy Week With Big-Ticket Wednesday

After a generally quiet week just passed, the week ahead offers significantly more market movement potential.  There's more economic data, and several of the reports are heavy hitters.  There is a Treasury auction cycle this time around with 2, 5, and 7yr on Mon-Wed--a day earlier than normal due to month-end.  There's month-end itself--a more active day or two at the end of any given month that can see trades coming in regardless of economic data, due to compulsory adjustments to managed portfolios.  

And of course, there's the Fed.  Wednesday's Fed meeting is a simple 'announcement' as opposed to the 4-time-a-year announcement+press conference+staff economic projections.  While the Fed says that there's no rule saying they have to announce big changes with the more robust set of events, we have yet to see them do anything else.  That said, having 2 different schedules is still a fairly new phenomenon.

That doesn't mean that the Fed can't announce anything significant, but that's not important anyway.  There's really nothing substantive that the Fed SHOULD be announcing at the moment.  Rather, Wednesday is and has been about garnering clues about the upcoming Fed meetings.  Unlike this week's, June's meeting WILL have a press conference that gives Yellen an opportunity to explain a bigger change.

On a final note, keep in mind that Wednesday will be our first look at GDP from the 1st quarter.    It's expected to come in at +1.0 vs +2.2 previously, but forecasts vary quite a bit.