MBS Live Recap: Bonds Mostly Interested in Italy Despite Other Options

Bonds had a couple options to choose from today when it came to potential market movers.  As far as known quantities, we knew there would be a speech from Fed Chair Powell (maybe he would clarify last week's inflation comments?) and also a big corporate bond deal from Comcast. 

Neither of the 'on-the-radar' events had much of an impact.  Maybe they would have had it not been for a moderate dose of Italian drama setting the tone in the overnight session.  Simply put, the head of the budget committee in Italy's lower house of parliament said Italy could only solve its problems if it left the Eurozone (i.e. just dropping the currency, not the membership in the EU).  

This resulted in a fairly noticeable rally in core European bond markets which then spilled over into US markets.  It wasn't huge, because frankly, the guy in question isn't in charge of Italy.  On top of that, he quickly issued a retraction that framed the comments as his opinion and not an indication of official policy.   With that, bonds bounced back toward higher yields until the 9:30am NYSE open allowed another batch of traders to get in on the trade.  

The net effect was underwhelming, with yields hitting a floor around 3.047% and then edging back up to 3.05+.  That's not enough of a victory to say that the current range of 3.06-3.09 is broken.  Even if the gains were bigger, we'd still be giving a wide berth to the upcoming economic data with the widest eye on Friday's wage growth numbers.