At A Glance

  • CC's down 1 tick to 100-04 as market waits for Fed
  • No major news so far this AM.
  • ISM Non-MFG comes in at 10AM eastern
  • Dow futures up a decent amount, helped by drop in oil yestereday
  • Big news of day = FOMC announcement at 2:15 ET.  Traders agree there won't be any change in lending rates, but the policy statement will be scrutinized as always
  • LOCK/FLOAT;
    • Hopefully, traders don't start trying to anticipate the movement to long before the actual announcement.  As long as there's no cause for reprice concern before the announcement, we can keep you up to date enough that you should be able to beat your lenders to the punch if a reprice becomes a risk
abbreviations guide (ongoing list): 
  • CC's
    • Current Coupons.  Basically it's whichever coupon in the FNMA 30 yr fixed stack that happens to be the most liquid or closest to par.
  • Choppy
    • refers the the prices of MBS vacillating wildly (big differences between highs and lows and lots of back and forth in between). 
  • MBS -                 
    • Mortgage Backed Security
  • MDPC-
    • Mid Day Price Change (plus means for the better, minus for the worse)
  • DOW or DJIA -    
    • Dow Jones Industrial Average
  • Ticks-                   
    • 1/32nds of bond pricing.  8 ticks=8/32nds=.25 in cost (YSP or discount)
  • DoD, YoY, MoM-  
    • Day over day, year over year, month over month, etc..
  • O/N-                   
    • Overnight
  • Coupon-               
    • The "interest rate' of the MBS
  • 6.0's, 5.5's           
    • always means FNMA 30yr Fixed MBS with a coupon of that number.  6.0's = 6.0% coupon rate MBS
  • PCE-                    
    • Personal Consumption Expenditures, a component of the Income and Outlay report and one of the Fed's preferred inflation indicators
  • UST-                    
    • United States Treasury Bonds.  5UST = 5 year, 10UST = 10 year, etc.. 
  • NAPM (PMI)         
    • National association of purchasing management (Purchasing Manager's Index)
  • ISM (MFG)           
    • Institute for Supply Management (mfg: manufacturing)
  • Wide/Gap/Gappy  
    • refers to the wideness or gap between treasury yields and MBS yields.
  • "Going Out"          
    • 4:45PM EST.  Official Close is 3pm EST 
  • FI                        
    • "fixed income."  For our purposes, will simply refer to treasuries and MBS 
  • NFP                    
    • Non-Farm Payrolls.  Key part of employment report.  Most meaningful gauge of labor market
  • ADP                    
    • ADP private payrolls, some feel a precursor to NFP, but historically quasi-accurate at best.
  • GSE
    • Government Sponsored Enterprise.  Refers to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
  • PPI
    • Producer Price Index. A key inflation indicator. 
  • CPI
    • Consumer Price Index.  An even more key inflation indicator.