MBS Live Recap: Slightly More Active Than a Typical Summertime Monday

Summertime Mondays are notorious for light volume and seemingly random trading.  Today was a slightly more active than normal in that regard, largely due to the presence of top tier data (Retail Sales) and a geopolitical event in the form of the Trump/Putin summit.  The latter was never expected to offer any major revelations, but the former is always capable of delivering some bond market momentum.

Bonds were just slightly weaker heading into the Retail Sales numbers.  The weakness continued after the report came out stronger than expected.  But wait!  It was 0.5 vs 0.5, so how was it stronger than expected?  The key difference was in the revision to last month's report (previously 0.8 but now 1.3%).  The "core" sales reading was also revised higher.  Additionally, several GDP estimates for Q2 were revised higher in the wage of the data. 

Combined with a fairly active day for corporate debt issuance, all of the above kept moderate pressure on Treasuries today.  MBS fared a bit better with Fannie 4.0 coupons only losing 2/32nds (.06) in price compared to 10yr Treasuries losing a quarter of a point.