The past two days saw a decisive bounce in Treasuries precipitated by what might have been a decisive bounce in European bond markets.  As of this the wee hours of this morning, Europe missed their window to trade bond yields through the ceilings that would have confirmed such a bounce.  German Bund yields instead met with resistance right in line with yesterday's highs.  All this despite the fact that Germany had strong economic data to motivate bond market selling.

In other words, European markets effectively "called off" the sell-off and returned to orbit near all-time low yields.  Today's strength in Treasuries is a simple reaction to the realization they were offsides.  It's a safe bet that traders who sold Treasuries short on the run down to 2% are covering those bets after the overnight resilience (those bets are covered by becoming buyers today). 

2014-12-189 bunds

MBS have done a reasonable job keeping pace with the bounce, but of course had less weakness to make up for considering yesterday's outperformance.   Fannie 3.0s and 3.5s are at the highs of the day, up 6 and 5 ticks respectively.  We haven't had any meaningful economic data, but several Fed speakers have been out saying generally bond-friendly things.  That's not a surprise considering the sources (Williams and Kocherlakota--both "doves"), but it's one more variable in the rearview with no negative implications.


MBS Pricing Snapshot
Pricing shown below is delayed, please note the timestamp at the bottom. Real time pricing is available via MBS Live.
MBS
FNMA 3.0
101-00 : +0-05
FNMA 3.5
104-03 : +0-04
FNMA 4.0
106-17 : +0-03
Treasuries
2 YR
0.6380 : +0.0050
10 YR
2.1760 : -0.0315
30 YR
2.7810 : -0.0370
Pricing as of 12/19/14 12:42PMEST

Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
9:18AM  :  Bond Markets Reluctantly Follow Europe Into Positive Territory

Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
aaron meyer  :  "sec 104 HR 5771 http://mndne.ws/1v0Hzax"
Hugh W. Page  :  "You mean the 1700 page omnibus bill that just passed? You can't find it in 1700 pages?"
aaron meyer  :  "this is all I can find http://mndne.ws/1v0FF9Q"
Hugh W. Page  :  "I know they extended the Mortgage Debt Relief Act but didn't hear that."
aaron meyer  :  "I'm hearing Congress approved the PMI deduction again for 2014, does anyone have a press release about it?"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - FED SHOULD HAVE SIGNALED WILLINGNESS TO BUY MORE BONDS IF INFLATION STAYS LOW- KOCHERLAKOTA"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- FED SHOULD HAVE VOWED TO KEEP RATES AT ZERO SO LONG AS INFLATION OUTLOOK STAYS BELOW 2 PCT - KOCHERLAKOTA"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- WOULD BE HARD TO REVERSE HARMFUL SLIDE IN INFLATION - KOCHERLAKOTA"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - FED'S FAILURE TO RESPOND TO WEAK INFLATION RISKS CREDIBILITY OF INFLATION TARGET - KOCHERLAKOTA"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- FED'S KOCHERLAKOTA SAYS FED IS CREATING 'UNACCEPTABLE' DOWNSIDE INFLATION RISKS"