MBS Live Day Ahead: Longer-Term Bonds Trying to Resist

Today begins with another glut of economic data at 8:30am, although it's fairly tame compared to yesterday's CPI/Retail Sales duo.  Housing Starts are expected to come in at 1.222 mln after last month's 1.226 mln reading.  The analogous numbers for Building Permits are 1.23mln vs 1.228 mln previously.  The only other consequential data at 8:30am is the Philly Fed Index, expected in at 18.0 vs 23.6 previously.  Jobless Claims comes out at the same time, but it's not a market mover these days.

Beyond that, bond markets--especially longer-dated bonds (7, 10, 30yr yields and Fannie 3.5 MBS, for a few examples) will be doing their best to cling to edge of the consolidation range broken yesterday.  In terms of technical analysis, most chartists consider the first day of a technical breakout to be a "test"--a sort of arming of a market bomb.  A second day spent on the other side of the recently-broken line is required for "confirmation."  

In that sense, if 10yr yields are able to close below 2.48 today, yesterday's breakout would be robbed of some validity.  At the very least, it would strongly reinforce the broader horizontal range between 2.3 and 2.53% for 2017.