MBS Live Recap: Today's Market Mover: Jawboning

When it comes to financial markets, the definition for "jawboning" is a bit looser than normal as it also encompasses market movement that occurs simply because "someone" said "something."  In other words, in some cases, the person who said the thing that moved markets may not have been trying to elicit a certain response, but I would still call that jawboning.

Ultimately, though, what we call it doesn't matter.  The fact is that today's market movers were all mere comments from a few key people as opposed to any new fundamental or technical developments.  These included comments from Jeffrey Gundlach (from late Friday) on the risk of a short squeeze in bonds, comments from Altanta Fed Pres. Bostic on slowing down rate hikes, and reports of the President lamenting Powell's rate hike path.

I wouldn't say any of these sets of comments would be big market movers, in general, but they represented some of the only potentially actionable news for bond traders today, so they ended up getting credit for the trades that may well have been made regardless.  Ultimately, those trades were in our favor, with 10yr yields dropping to 2.819 by the end of the day and Fannie 4.0 MBS gaining 5/32ds (.16) to end at 101-31 (101.97).