MBS MID-DAY: Weaker After Oil Price Geyser and 5yr Auction; Fed on Deck

Bond markets are slightly weaker so far today, but still very much within the recent range ahead of the 2pm Fed Announcement.  Unlike many recent examples, today's overnight session didn't see any influence pass from European bond markets to US Treasuries.  European bonds definitely provided cues for improvement in Treasuries, but the latter didn't take them--opting instead to hold almost perfectly flat into the domestic hours.

The first and only major source of inspiration arrived at 10am when oil prices and volume spiked massively.  In fact, it was the single biggest minute of volume in Crude futures in the past several months (I only have minute-by-minute volume history back to July).  The timing is odd because the crude inventories data didn't come out until 10:30am.  The only explanation I've heard was that there was big algorithmic short-covering.  I'm not satisfied with that explanation, for what it's worth, but oil prices were operating in important technical territory at the time.  Whatever the case, the effects on bond markets were clear.

Since then, we got a slight additional push into weaker territory from a fairly poor 5yr Treasury auction.  I think this can be forgiven on Fed day, and it looks like markets are generally in agreement.  After the first little bit of selling, bonds have stabilized near the day's previous highs.