Yesterdays News

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What happened yesterday? Mortgage backed securities (MBS) lost -53 basis points from Tuesday's close which caused 30 year fixed rates to move higher. The benchmark FNMA coupon has now lost -88BPS from Monday's highs. MBS were under pressure right from the first trade as they tanked -34BPS right out of the gate.Traders have been selling off of their positions as they no longer believe that the benchmark FNMA 3.5% August coupon can sustain their lofty levels of Monday's intra-day high. New Home Sales hit a five year high as they rose 8.3% in June.  The seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 497K units is still a very small piece of the housing picture and so this report doesn't have the impact on pricing that it once did.  But still it was positive economic news and did provide a light amount of pressure on pricing. The sell off of MBS was accelerated in response to the Flash Eurozone PMI rose to 50.4 (an 18th month high).  A reading above 50 shows economic expansion.  U.S. based bonds such as MBS have been a huge beneficiary of European weakness - so when European data surprises to the upside, U.S. bonds sell off.  Which is what happened here. We had a 5 year Treasury note auction and the results were released at 1:05EDT.  Results: $35 billion at 1.41% with a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.46 which is weaker demand than the 2.57 ratio of the last 10 year note auction.  This also pressured MBS and drove us to our worst pricing levels of the day at 1:46EDT which was -82BPS from yesterday's close. But there was some good news - we did find a new temporary bottom and did get a nice bounce of that support level as MBS rallied from -82 BPS to -54BPS by 3:00EDT.  That is a +28BPS improvement in pricing from our worst levels of the day.