MBS MID-DAY: Bonds Recover After Morning Weakness

By: Matthew Graham

Overnight trading was inconsequential for domestic bond markets with both Treasuries and MBS hitting New York hours very close to 'unchanged.'  Asian market hours saw very slight gains and European hours marked the onset of the selling pressure.  The weakness persisted through 10am, at which point domestic bond markets found their cues to hold ground.

MBS and Treasuries have been doing a lot of 'follow-the-leader' of late, where the leader could be anything from stock prices to German Bund yields to corporate bond issuance.  Indeed part of the more abrupt weakness between 8:30am and 9:00am this morning was in response to the early corporate bond announcements. 

Apart from the supply/demand justification, a more general consideration is the aforementioned "following."  Fresh off the corporate-related selling, Treasuries were also faced with higher stock prices and Bund yields.  Stocks ran into trouble right as they were reaching their near-term technical ceiling (which has been anything near 1990 in the S&P).  We might also keep an eye on the technical ceiling of 0.62 in German Bund yields, which has increasingly been at the scene when Treasuries have managed to bounce back from intraday weakness.  (In this same chart, you can also see the more aggressive pace of selling in Bunds, which likely put additional pressure on US bond 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
101-19 : +0-02
FNMA 3.5
104-16 : +0-02
FNMA 4.0
106-24 : +0-01
Treasuries
2 YR
0.6050 : -0.0040
10 YR
2.0460 : -0.0120
30 YR
2.8810 : -0.0180
Pricing as of 10/6/15 12:56PMEST

Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
9:59AM  :  Sometimes Weakness is Just Weakness

Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
Matthew Graham  :  "They conveniently left out the "previous" forecast, but I think it was 4.0% last summer"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- IMF WORLD ECONOMIC OUTLOOK CUTS GLOBAL GROWTH OUTLOOK TO 3.1 PERCENT FOR 2015, 3.6 PCT IN 2016"
Matthew Graham  :  "global rates will asymptotically approach zero as the birth rate declines and the explosive/exponential growth engines begin to level off. Now... that could take 30-60 years, or it could be starting to happen in the 90's with Japan. "
Christopher Stevens  :  "not in as much trouble as it would be with a yld below 1%"
Hugh W. Page  :  "I'm beginning to be a believer. I think the world economy is slowing and the US will eventually slow too. Fed may hike once or even twice but will have to initiate easing action sooner rather than later. Rates go DOWN...."
Christopher Stevens  :  "If the 10YR is under 1% the economy is in a world of trouble and people wont be buying houses anyway. "
Matthew Graham  :  "right. US 10yr will be under 1% in our lifetimes, but whether it's soon enough to matter to any of our careers, who knows... "
Sung Kim  :  "we need to differentiate time horizon views"
Sung Kim  :  "oh, it's going to happen CS"
Christopher Stevens  :  "JT- I just can't see that happening. It seems every time we seem to have poor economic news (both globally and domestically) the market shrugs it off after a day or two. 10YR seems pretty content above 2.04 and even more comfortable above 2.08"
John Tassios  :  "MG's day ahead is spot on. Bond range is already priced in for the current economic environment. However, further worldwide and domestic deflation trends will move yields lower in coming months, in my opinion."