MBS Live Recap: "Totally Expected" Budget Bill Shocks Markets

There's a good video in the news stream with Austan Goolsbee going on a bit of rant about how the Senate's procedural vote on a budget resolution late last night was totally expected.  Someone should have told financial markets ahead of time.  Traders speak with dollars and their words were clear in response to the budget bill.  Either it really was a surprise, or they were simply holding out for confirmation that the Senate could actually get the 51 votes needed.  Indeed, Rand Paul's dissension made it a close call.

Confused yet?  

The bottom line is that this procedural budget resolution contained language that will allow the Senate to pass tax legislation with 51 votes instead of 60.  The fact that the Senate was able to get 51 votes together for this effort suggests to some that they can muster a repeat effort when it comes time to vote on taxes.  Stocks like tax reform.  Bonds don't.  So stocks and bond yields surged in relative unison.  The end.

You're still here?  That really was "the end."  Nothing else meaningful happened after 9:30pm last night.  The massive sell-off that began in bond markets merely leveled-off and held eerily steady throughout the domestic session.  Stocks cobbled together a few more points of improvement after cash markets opened in the morning, but there too, a majority of the move had taken place before 10:10pm last night.

10yr yields ended the day 6.5bps higher at 2.383%.  On a positive note, the 2.40% technical ceiling remained untouched, but on a negative note, we would have expected a battle with 2.37% to come first anyway (and that battle was lost today).  Fannie 3.5 MBS lost a quarter point and many lenders' rate sheets barely reflect that much damage.