MBS Live Morning: Bonds Catch No Breaks Even After Lower Core Inflation

This morning's much-anticipated core PCE inflation headline came out at 5.2% year-over-year versus a median forecast and previous reading of 5.3%.  Great news! Right?  Turns out: not so much.  Markets were still hung up about a big beat in headline inflation (0.9 vs 0.5 previously) as well as a big beat in the Employment Cost Index (1.4 vs 1.1 f'cast).  Yields spiked to the highest levels of the week after a bit of initial indecision.  MBS started out down half a point.  

Bonds managed to bounce a bit at the start of the NYSE open, but could not manage to hold onto the gains.  None of this minutia matters much though...  In the bigger picture, bonds are chopping around in a sideways, volatile range until they hear from the Fed next Wednesday.

This isn't to say that all will be revealed and healed after the Fed, but if we had to pick the next key input for bigger picture bond trends, that would be it.  From there, we'll continue to expect a heavy focus on all manner of inflation reports as those should do more than anything to inform the pace of Fed tightening as the year progresses.