As expected, today's congressional testimony from Fed Chair Yellen was, by far, the biggest market mover in the room.  The volume and movement at 10am dwarfed that of the 8:30am Retail Sales numbers.  All that having been said, the net effect is less than exciting and not at all far from yesterday's latest levels.

In other words, bonds were up and down following Yellen, but movement cancelled itself out.  There were no meaningful takeaways or surprises in the testimony or Q&A. 

Markets were ostensibly holding out for something more dovish in the initial remarks released at 10am.  When they didn't get it, bonds sold-off until hitting technical support at 2.57% in 10yr yields.  After bouncing there, MBS and Treasuries are both close to unchanged levels.


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
98-06 : +0-01
FNMA 3.5
102-05 : +0-00
FNMA 4.0
105-14 : +0-01
Treasuries
2 YR
0.4719 : +0.0079
10 YR
2.5431 : -0.0059
30 YR
3.3648 : -0.0042
Pricing as of 7/15/14 12:36PMEST

Morning Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
11:27AM  :  Holding Ground/Moderate Bounce; Reprice Risk Pulling Back
11:01AM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Negative Reprice Risk is Increasing
10:33AM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Back Into Weaker Territory as Yellen Q&A Begins; Lows of the Day
10:07AM  :  Back in Positive Territory As Yellen Testimony Begins
8:45AM  :  Bond Markets Weaker After Retail Sales

Live Chat Featured Comments
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
Jeff Anderson  :  "Anyone else seeing clients hours cut vs layoffs? I have a loan closing Thur that almost wasn't. Due to seniority at the hospital someone moved to her department and forced a bump. Her and a co-worker literally had to go in to the back room to flip a coin to see who's hours were getting reduced from 40 to 32 hours. Been hearing that quite a bit lately. Crazy. Nice policy, but I guess it's better than layoffs."
Matthew Graham  :  "I don't think it's funny at all AH. We have a vested interest in low rates, and thus an inherent cognitive bias that prevents truly objective analysis. It's in an originator's nature to root for lower rates and to analyze the data in the most rate-favorable light. "
Andrew Horowitz  :  "its funny how with some reports you guys look to the internals to find the faults in the reports but on weaker reports you focus on just the headlines"
Sung Kim  :  "huh? it's only good because it's not negative."
Hugh W. Page  :  "Flip a coin. Heads - good Tails - bad"
Sung Kim  :  "i am confused, are these retail sales numbers good?"
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS- US JUNE RETAIL SALES EX-AUTOS/GAS/BUILDING MATERIALS/FOOD SERVICES +0.6 PCT (CONS +0.5 PCT) VS MAY+0.2 PCT (PREV UNCH)"
Matthew Graham  :  "but with "yeah buts""
Matthew Graham  :  "RTRS - US JUNE RETAIL SALES +0.2 PCT (CONSENSUS +0.6 PCT) VS MAY +0.5 PCT (PREV +0.3 PCT)"
Matthew Graham  :  "big miss"