Mortgage rates bounced back up today as the underlying bond market continued the selling trend seen on 3 out of 4 days so far this week. In the overnight hours, bond yields (which generally correlate with mortgage rates) moved higher in concert with rising oil prices.  That said, it would be a mistake to assume this is the only correlation in town. Oil prices continued to rise sharply during domestic hours, but bond yields remained flat–possibly benefiting from safe-haven demand following heavy losses in stocks. The average top-tier 30yr fixed rate is still under its recent highs, but after today’s jump, it’s fairly close. This is a victory of sorts, considering 10yr Treasury yields are clearly above their recent highs.  [thirtyyearmortgagerates]

Dueling Narrative Leave Yields Higher Ahead of Jobs Report

In the overnight session yields followed oil prices higher, but notably, Treasuries continued to sell even after oil leveled off. Then during domestic hours, it was Treasuries’ turn to level off while oil prices spiked.  From 9am to 2pm, oil rose nearly $5/bbl while Treasury yields remained completely flat. One way to justify this would be via safe-haven demand from heavy stock losses, but we continue not loving that explanation because it is even less reliably correlated than bonds vs oil. At this point, we’re simply hoping that the jobs report helps restore some sense of normal market/data correlation, but at this point, anything’s possible. 

Econ Data / Events

Challenger layoffs (Feb)

48.307K vs — f’cast, 108.435K prev

Continued Claims (Feb)/21

1,868K vs 1850K f’cast, 1833K prev

Import prices mm (Jan)

0.2% vs 0.2% f’cast, 0.1% prev

Jobless Claims (Feb)/28

213K vs 215K f’cast, 212K prev

Market Movement Recap

08:51 AM Weaker overnight and little-changed after data. MBS down just over an eighth and 10yr up 3.6bps at 4.136

12:23 PM sideways at weaker levels. MBS down 5 ticks (.16) and 10yr up 3.6bps at 4.136

02:35 PM sideways at similar levels. MBS down 6 ticks (.19) and 10yr up 3.4bps at 4.134

The bond market has already shown an indifference to this week’s econ data as a market mover (even though we expect that to change with tomorrow’s jobs report). This morning, however, the trend continues with stronger jobless claims and a big uptick in labor costs failing to inspire a reaction. But there has been movement. A steady wave of overnight selling pushed 10yr yields more than 3bps higher, easily breaking above the 4.10% technical level. Attempting to clearly connect that move to underlying motivation is an imperfect science, yet again. Oil prices and yields continue to correlate, but yields rose faster on a relative basis.

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After 2 days of much higher volatility at the open, bonds are roughly unchanged so far this morning and the overnight session was noticeably calmer. Today’s big ticket data includes ADP Employment and ISM Services. The former is already out (63k vs 50k, with a negative revision about the same size as the beat) and not moving markets. With that, we wait for ISM Services at 10am ET–arguably a much more capable market mover on average. With 10s trading in the 4.07’s currently, 4.10% increasingly looks like a technical ceiling.

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