Miraculously (and sarcastically) bond markets were little-changed overnight.  The first cues for movement came from the ECB's press conference where Draghi was a bit more dovish than we've heard him recently.  The ECB president said that deflation is a risk and that the committee could consider extending purchases beyond the current September 2016 deadline if needed. 

While those sorts of future "maybes" aren't really meaningful in terms of policy guidance (they're too far out and too vague), European bond markets seemed pleased with the overall message.  German Bunds rallied noticeably, helping provide a mild boost for domestic bond markets in the opening hour. 

The European rally was tame enough that US bond markets didn't feel compelled to follow too closely.  Once 10yr yields approached the bottom of the recent range, the game was over.  A small burst of corporate bond offerings and another rally in oil prices helped push bonds all the way to the weaker side of the recent range.  Of course this doesn't mean much, given the narrowness of said range. 

Jobless Claims, International Trade, and ISM data were all inconsequential today.  It's actually fairly eerie.  We're either getting set up for a huge reaction to NFP tomorrow, or the focus is so firmly on the Fed meeting in 2 weeks that normally relevant data will have a hard time pushing us out of this range.

For what it's worth, MBS outperformed Treasuries over a 2-day period with both Fannie 3.5s and 3.0s making it to their best levels of the month.  Meanwhile, Treasury yields didn't break yesterday's lows.


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
100-26 : +0-07
FNMA 3.5
103-30 : +0-06
FNMA 4.0
106-15 : +0-05
Treasuries
2 YR
0.6960 : -0.0160
10 YR
2.1630 : -0.0250
30 YR
2.9372 : -0.0167
Pricing as of 9/3/15 6:07PMEST

Today's Reprice Alerts and Updates
A recap of Alerts and Updates provided to MBS Live subscribers.
10:27AM  :  ALERT ISSUED: Weakness With Renewed Corporate Issuance; Could Pose Reprice Risk
10:18AM  :  Draghi Comments Help; Non-Manufacturing a Non-Event So Far

MBS Live Chat Highlights
A recap of featured comments from the Live Discussion on the MBS Live Dashboard.
Sung Kim  :  "guideline changes for agency go by settlement date"
Matthew Graham  :  "PC, safe to say settlement will never refer to application date. "Closing" also seems to be defined in several ways around the country (i.e. signing, vs funding, vs recording). Settlement typically implies distribution of funds, but in the securitized mortgage world, it is usually the settlement date for the underlying MBS pools. I bet someone here knows for sure, but I can at least tell you it's nothing to do with Application Date."
Matthew Graham  :  "yeah, 8:30am ET is always the big time for top-shelf Federal-level economic data."
Jeff Anderson  :  "EST"
Edie Clark  :  "NFP at 8:30am our time or EST? "
Phillip Cannon  :  "Anyone know offhand whether the Freddie changes announced that state mortgages with "settlement dates" after 10/26 is referring to application date or closing?"