MBS Live Recap: Only Volatile if You Were Standing Too Close

Bonds responded generally favorably to the available economic data, which included on-target ADP jobs numbers (177 vs 175k forecast) and weaker Chicago PMI (51.5 vs 54.0 forecast).  That only helped us in the morning, however.  European bond market weakness pulled yields higher into the European close, and month-end volatility at home caused a few more swings by the end of the day.

If you were to only look at today's bond market movement relative to yesterday's, things looked downright volatile.  10yr yields began the day above yesterday's highest yields and within 2 hours had swung well below yesterday's lowest yields.  They swung back to nearly the same levels 2 more times before finally ending the day with an abrupt move to the highs.

Volatile and scary, right?

Well, not really.  As is always the case, we need to temper our assessment of volatility based on the y-axis.  In other words, what are the yields that correspond with the movement on the chart?  With lows of 1.554 and highs of 1.585, it really wasn't that crazy of a day.  If we change the chart so that every day is represented by a single candlestick, today is one of the tamer recent examples.