At the beginning of the week, we discussed the shared fate between stocks and bonds, noting that they'd been exceptionally well-connected of late and that both were approaching the later phases of a move lower (in price for stocks, and in yield for bonds).  From a technical standpoint, both sides of the market have indeed ended the previous move, but now can't seem to agree on the next move.  Stocks' vote is to move back in the other direction while bonds have been flat so far this week.

2014-4-17 Stock Lever

Additionally, 2.66 has emerged as an important short term ceiling for 10yr yields--at least as important as anything can be on a 3.5 day week without any watershed market movers.  For now, it acts as the line of demarcation between "sideways" and "heading higher again with stocks."  It could be as simple as Treasuries choosing to stay flatter because the last push to low yields was geopolitically driven, and bonds are more attuned to flight-to-safety movement than stocks, or it could just be the "short, inconsequential week" business.

Either way, today is the last day of that week, but it's not without its potential market movers.  In fact, two of the week's most important pieces of data will be out today.  Jobless Claims leads off at 830am--always a solid mid-tier trading consideration.  The bigger data hits at 10am in the form of the Philly Fed survey.  While this report still isn't on par with the likes of NFP and ISM data, it's as close to top tier as second tier reports get (an assertion based only on it's capacity to cause movement in bond markets over the past several years).

If we see much movement today, it's only really significant if it's taking 10yr yields markedly below 2.60 or above 2.66.  Actually 2.66 is better thought of as a range of 2.66-2.68 as the latter is the more frequent point of resistance against rallying 10yr yields.  Point being, breaking 2.66 isn't really that disconcerting, but yields have had a tougher time breaking below 2.68 when approaching it from above (hence, it's better to stay below).


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
97-06 : +0-00
FNMA 3.5
101-08 : +0-00
FNMA 4.0
104-14 : +0-00
Treasuries
2 YR
0.3750 : +0.0000
10 YR
2.6426 : +0.0056
30 YR
3.4561 : +0.0031
Pricing as of 4/17/14 7:51AMEST

Tomorrow's Economic Calendar
Time Event Period Forecast Prior
Thursday, Apr 17
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims (k)* w/e 315 300
10:00 Philly Fed Business Index * Apr 10.0 9.0