MBS Live Recap: Despite Interesting Tidbits From Fed, Bonds Barely Budge

One of the most interesting parts of today's Fed Minutes release was their characterization of the market's surprise at December announcement.  At best, the Fed was seen as being a shade too optimistic about the economy and the ability to remain in a "steady as she goes" stance with monetary policy.  At worst, the Fed was being oblivious to burgeoning risks. 

While there were real risks to consider, the most obvious risk was the fact that stocks were in full panic mode. Granted, it's not the Fed's job to placate the stock market, but they sometimes get wrapped up in such things anyway.  This time around, they basically admitted as much, saying they heard that folks were surprised at their December announcement, but that those folks were now pacified by recent speeches where the Fed had talked about being patient on rate hikes.

In other words: "we heard you and we handled it."  In my view, this would have been worth a bit of a hawkish reading on today's minutes (because it implies some of January's Fed friendliness was simply in response to stock market whining and had less to do with actual economic developments), but the Fed has done a good enough job of tying the friendliness to actual economic developments, apparently!

Bonds agreed, considering they didn't really move at all in the bigger picture.  The same could be said for stocks, with the S&P heading out the door precisely in line with pre-Fed levels.