MBS Live Recap: Markets Finally Doing Interesting Things, But...

We had to wait all the way until January 24th of 2020, but bonds finally offered their first real shred of willingness to challenge the established range of late 2019.  When we talk about ranges, we use 10yr Treasuries for these reasons.  In 10yr terms, the range has been 1.71 to 1.95%, which is reasonably narrow for a 3 month+ time frame.

It looked like the range would be quickly crushed as war with Iran quickly entered the realm of possibility on the night of the missile attacks against Iraqi air bases.  But with the de-escalation the following day, the range was actually strongly reinforced.  Rates have been trickling since then without more than a 5bp move in 10yr yields until today.  That same move also breaks us well below the 1.71% boundary to close at 1.686%.  

As we often discuss, the first break beyond a technical level requires some confirmation.  That makes Monday important from a technical standpoint.  It also makes the coronavirus news cycle important as it appears to be the key ingredient in this particular range breakout.

Next week also has a ton of econ data as well as Fed announcement and press conference on Wednesday.  A big bounce in Treasuries would be mitigated to some extent by likely outperformance on the part of MBS (they've underperformed this week, despite moving in a friendly direction).