MBS MID-DAY: Saga of Mortgage Outperformance Continues; Tide May be Turning

It's the same old story for MBS: Treasuries are getting hit hard by supply pressure, both from fairly epic levels of corporate bond issuance and the regularly-scheduled levels of Treasury auctions.  Increased supply leads to lower prices and higher yields.  With Treasuries being the subject of the auctions AND the basis for corporate bond issuance (meaning Treasuries are sold to lock corporate rates), they're taking a much bigger hit than MBS.

The problem is being compounded by a big bounce back in Asian equities markets over the past few days.  This is putting general pressure on safe-haven assets that had previously benefited when Asia was leaking back to the lowest recent levels from the late-August death spiral.  Both the Nikkei and Hang Seng are well off those lows so far this week.  The Nikkei, in particular, had a tremendously strong rally after comments from Japan's central bank on lowering its inflation target and from the Prime Minister regarding lowering the corporate tax rate to bolster growth. 

To be clear though, the lion's share of the bond market weakness is attributable to the massive amount of corporate issuance. 

The tide may be turning though--at least to some extent.  The afternoon brought a well-received 10yr Treasury auction.  This could be investors' way of saying "these are the levels where we're interested in stepping in to buy the recent drop in prices."  It was far from definitive, but bonds have been trading much better since 1pm.