MBS Live Day Ahead: Bond Market Definitely "Not Quite Dead Yet" Post-Election.

Heading into the election, the dominant trading theme was "sideways to slightly weaker" for both stocks and bonds.  Now, before you point to the fact that October was pretty rough for bonds (chart 1 below), let's also remember that it was only a 20bp range in 10yr yields (not that bad, historically), and that it was well-contained by a longer-term range of 0.5-0.95 that's also historically narrow.  Moreover, MBS weren't nearly as week, and mortgage rate movement vs MBS was even friendlier than MBS vs Treasuries.  Cap it all off with the fact that election night didn't even see a break above .95% and suddenly the bond market might be "not quite dead yet."  

Rough October:

But keep the context in mind:

Apart from traders continuing to file back into the market post-election, motivation can also come from the Fed today.  The latest policy announcement hits at 2pm ET.  No major changes are expected, but the topic of asset purchases (specifically, adjustments to the weighted average maturity or WAM of the Fed's bond holdings) could be discussed in the press conference, and a few bond traders might care.