MBS MID-DAY: Holding Modest Gains in Uneventful Trading

The clear message from today's trading range in bond markets is that this weekend will finally be an actual weekend.  That's a change of pace from the recent norm, where weekends have been focal points for volatility.  It wasn't a surprise to see that sort of volatility considering that there were major developments on each of the past two weekends (Greek referendum first, then the EU Summit this past weekend that produced the agreement).  Similarly, with Greece and other Eurozone countries agreeing on--well... the agreement by this morning, there's no drama left for this weekend.

Now begins a long, less consequential slog for Greece in its effort to implement the agreed-upon reforms and ultimately unlock the rest of the bailout funds.  That will all probably happen.  The biggest uncertainties have been addressed.  So markets are free to go about their business.  It's not that this freedom didn't exist before, just that it was distorted by Greece-related volatility.

Indeed, the whole point of much of my recent analysis has been to suggest that bond markets had been doing what they wanted to do in the bigger picture.  That meant "moving higher in yield" in May and June, and holding ground in July, even though the Greece situation suggests the opposite on both occasions. 

Today, bond markets don't want to be doing much of anything heading into the weekend--a fact that's reflected not only the in the narrow trading range, but also in light trading volumes.  There was a very brief move into weaker territory following the strong Housing Starts data this morning, but as soon as traders realized the strength came only from multi-family, the weakness reversed course.  Multi-family construction doesn't bespeak sustainable growth of the American Dream in the same way that single-family construction would.  As such, it's not seen as being bullish for the economy (it's actually more of a byproduct of the bipolarization of wealth, post-crisis, and the financing challenges that has created for less financially secure borrowers).