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MBS Mid-Day: Widespread Negative Reprices as Yellen Shows Up In Hiking Gear

This morning's economic data had moderate impact on bond market trading levels.  The two key releases were ADP Employment and ISM Non-Manufacturing.  Of the two, ADP was the bigger market mover despite falling closer to the median forecast.

The takeaway is that bond markets are most interested in this week's labor market data, and will obviously be sated by Friday morning's NFP.  The other takeaway is that it's not going to take a stellar report to reinforce the writing on the wall.

As for that proverbial writing, Yellen showed up this morning in her hiking gear (which incidentally includes a pen, to help more clearly delineate proverbial wall-writing).  While her prepared remarks didn't address monetary policy, several questions from the House Financial Services Committee made the topic unavoidable.  This ultimately proved to be a much bigger market mover than the economic data, taking Treasuries and MBS well into their weakest levels since September.

Bottom line: Yellen unequivocally reinforced last week's FOMC Announcement message, which is that the Fed is ready to hike in December.  In fact, she noted that the Fed views a more immediate hike as the more prudent choice, in order to better ensure a gradual pace of hikes overall.  The Fed really doesn't get much more transparent than this.  If they do NOT end up hiking in December, it will only be because something very serious and unexpected happened between now and then.

This MBS Market Commentary is provided in partnership with MBS Live and provided exclusively to MBS Live Subcribers.