Today’s Gains Help Us Understand Yesterday’s Losses

Wednesday’s weakness was severely lacking in the scapegoat department. In other words, there were not big, obvious justifications for the spike in bond yields. Today’s rally had a suggestion: perhaps the market was nervous about a potential update to the inflation framework in today’s Powell speech.  After all, it was the previous inflation framework update in 2020 (which basically concluded that rates could stay “lower for longer,” even if inflation was elevated) that was responsible for a lot of drama over the past 3 years. Although the 8:30am economic data helped a bit, most of today’s gains followed the 8:40am Powell speech.  The absence of stock losses makes the Powell explanation all the more plausible (i.e. if bonds were rallying on weak data, we’d expect to see stocks lose some ground, and they didn’t).

Econ Data / Events

Retail Sales

0.1 vs 0.0 f’cast

Retail Sales Control Group

-0.2 vs 0.3 f’cast, 0.5 prev

Core PPI Monthly

-0.4 vs 0.3 f’cast, 0.4 prev

Core PPI Annual

3.1 vs 3.1 f’cast, 4.0 prev
big revision from 3.3 last month

Jobless Claims

229k vs 229k

Philly Fed 

-4 vs -11 f’cast, -26.4 prev

Market Movement Recap

09:28 AM Modestly stronger overnight and catching a “no whammies” bid early.  MBS up 9 ticks (.28) and 10yr yield down 6 bps at 4.475

12:10 PM Best levels of the day with MBS up nearly half a point and 10yr down 8.5bps at 4.45

02:59 PM Still near best levels.  MBS up 3/8ths and 10yr down 8bps at 4.456

Houses in 85% of the nation’s metropolitan areas are considered overvalued, with more than half of those by 10% or above, Fitch Ratings found.

US corporations with over a trillion in assets snapped up an unprecedented amount of short-term Treasuries when President Donald Trump announced a 90-day delay for most of his “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to Clearwater Analytics.

The plaintiff is asking for a Seattle federal court to postpone the Redfin shareholder vote, scheduled for June 4, until the company disseminates supplemental information curing the alleged omissions in the proxy filing.

The closely watched case centers on bank allegations the government corporation promised certain reverse-mortgage assets in return for funding then reneged.

The Financial Technology Association will now defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s open banking rule after the Trump administration sided with banks that sued the agency.

Another “Just Because” Sell Off

This is getting old…  and unfortunately, more prevalent. The bond market has been offering up more and more examples of reasonably brisk changes in yields without any obvious catalysts. This forces market watchers to concoct narratives to fit the price action (i.e. to say things that wouldn’t be said if the mystery move was a rally). In other words, guesses and generalizations are the name of the game. What we do know is that a broad rotation out of bonds and into stocks is underway, even if stocks weren’t a good example of that today. We know there were some headlines regarding potential Korea/Japan trade deals in the works. And we know the bond market isn’t thrilled with the potential Treasury issuance implications associated with congressional budget headlines. All that having been said, the reality is probably significantly more complicated and boring than this small collection of usual suspects. 

Market Movement Recap

10:06 AM Modestly weaker overnight and a bit weaker so far.  MBS down almost an eighth and 10yr up 2bps at 4.49

12:29 PM More weakness.  MBS down just over a quarter point and 10yr up 5bps at 4.519

02:26 PM Flat at weakest levels.  MBS down 9 ticks (.28) and 10yr up 5.3bps at 4.522

03:11 PM Weaker at the 3pm CME close.  MBS down 11 ticks (.34) and 10yr up 6.5bps at 4.534

As Roy Cohn once instructed a young Donald Trump, much can be accomplished by attacking first and dealing with the consequences later. I get opinions from both sides: “Rob, when are you going to wise up? Yesterday’s Commentary discussed a lopsided pro-Trump view of the recent tariff activity, and how the changes may impact mortgage rates. But China made no concessions. By now, most of us are familiar with this pattern: Trump makes big claims about what his tariffs can get, only for him to later back down without the other country giving up anything meaningful. It happened with Mexico, Canada, and most of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ levies. Despite his claims, the United States seems to need other countries’ trade as much as they need ours, diminishing Trump’s negotiating position. Meanwhile, our financial markets are jacked around, and our potential borrowers are afraid to pull the trigger. Your readers should keep that in mind.” (Today’s podcast can be found here and Sponsored by TRUE and its Mortgage Operations Service (MOS) AI background worker, which transforms borrower documents into instant, trustworthy data for real-time decisioning. TRUE helps lenders accelerate decisions, cut costs, and deliver superior borrower experience, all without a $100M tech budget. Hear an interview with Hometap’s Josh Gaffney on the evolving regulatory landscape for Home Equity Investments (HEIs), highlighting state-by-state approaches, industry-led initiatives, and what an ideal regulatory framework could look like as the market matures.)

In early April, amid the most volatile portion of the market’s reaction to the tariff announcement, mortgage rates were officially over 7% for a single day. By the middle of the following week, they were well on their way lower, ultimately ending the month just over 6.8%. Since then, it’s been tough sledding for bonds and the rate market. Almost every day in the month of May has been a bad one.  Even if the size of the rate increases have been reasonably small, they’re starting to add up.  Now today, the average lender is back on the doorstep of 7% for top tier conventional 30yr fixed mortgage rates.  A second wave of weakness in the bond market this afternoon is resulting in many lenders announcing mid-day increases.  With that, today’s index ended up at 6.99%–all this despite an absence of any standout individual motivations in today’s news. Tomorrow brings a slew of important economic reports.  If they come in stronger than expected, rates could face additional upward pressure.  If they’re weaker, markets may dismiss them as stale data that was overly influenced by tariff-related uncertainty that has since improved. 

It’s a potentially frustrating time for bond watchers. The rules have already changed in a big way to accommodate the new wild card presented by tariff policy, and it seems like there have been far more “fine tuning” tweaks to those rules than normal. Bonds will always move based on a combination of factors. Some are obvious and basic.
Others are exceptionally esoteric. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a return of a more basic pattern with a measurable de-escalation in the trade war helping stocks and hurting bonds (yes, there was a moment in April where escalation also hurt bonds, but that’s one of those esoteric examples that no longer applies). For the moment, the stock lever (the ultra basic, conventional wisdom notion of buying/selling bonds and doing the opposite with stocks) has been reasonably consistent.

It is not incorrect to view this as a loose barometer of market optimism/fear regarding trade policy.  Data can and will still matter, but as seen with yesterday’s CPI, some of the data will be taken with a grain of salt until we have a better sense of finalized trade policy and the global market’s reaction.  Also, one should not assume that the correlation in the chart is some sort of reliable rule–especially over short time horizons.  
As for today, it is largely a placeholder in terms of data. Tomorrow is the active day of the week.