MBS Live Day Ahead: Still Waiting on Bigger Potential Market Movers

In the grand scheme of things, today will likely be another placeholder of a day unless some unexpected (and fairly significant) trade war update happens to come out.  That leaves the afternoon's 10yr auction as the only moderately capable market mover, and even then, we wouldn't want to hold our breath for Treasury auctions to move markets.

Being, as we are, in "wait and see" mode, I'd rather take this morning to reflect on a phenomenon from the recent past.  Raise your hand if you thought I was a bit crazy to claim "NFP doesn't matter" ahead of last Friday's blowout jobs report, and then if you thought I was even crazier to double down on that claim after stocks and bonds quickly began to respond to the stellar numbers.  (My own hand is about halfway up, for what it's worth!)

It will always feel very risky and perhaps a little foolish to scoff at seemingly unequivocal cues from the biggest historical market movers, but as of this morning, scoffing is not only justified.  It's confirmed:

To reiterate last week's point in simpler words: this market is waiting on something that it can't learn from a strong jobs report.  It will almost certainly continue waiting after today.  Whenever the waiting ends, that's when we'll see the bigger movement.