Perhaps more than any other day in the past few weeks, today stood as an example of the mortgage market's ability to put up a fight when the time is right.  As we've discussed frequently, they've been getting pummeled by Treasuries as the latter's yields fell to new multi-year lows.  MBS prices are at multi-year highs, to be fair, but in an underwhelming way compared to what's been going on in Treasuries.

Our thesis was that the mortgage market needed TIME and STABILITY from the bond market, and it could work with one at a time if need be.  If bonds could manage to weaken a bit, but not too much, that would be a bonus.  Today, then, delivered on the the "stability" side of the equation with yields trading their narrowest range in more than 2 weeks and ticking that bonus box of "weakening a bit."

And so it came to be that, at times today, we were looking at 10yr Treasury prices down more than 3/8ths of a point while MBS prices were unchanged to slightly stronger.  Hello shoe!  Meet the other foot!

Lender pricing strategies remain varied, however, and it will take more time for lenders to do for you what the bond market did for MBS today.

Looking ahead, most of the focus for the upcoming week is being placed on the Jackson Hole symposium where markets hope to get more refinement of the monetary policy outlook from Powell in addition to the Fed Minutes on Wednesday.  They shouldn't hold their breath, but I'd agree the Fed is really the only game in town next week.