The lack of month end buying and rebounding stocks has pinched treasury and mortgage pricing this morning. 10 year notes are off 12/32’s (yield 3.65%), mortgage backs off 6/32’s, and stocks are up 85 on the big board. The week ahead will be loaded with first tier data including everything from Construction Spending, Housing numbers, and the Employment Report for January.
Earlier today, Personal Income/Spending hit the tape plus .4% and plus .2%, slightly better than economists had predicted yet not anything to write home about. Construction Spending was another story, falling 1.2% versus the minus .5% many were looking for. Cold weather and competition from a heavy inventory of distressed/foreclosure sales has done the trick once again.
The ISM Index (Manufacturing) surprised to the upside, putting it its best number since August 2004 (plus 3.5 points to 58.4). Digging deeper into the numbers, most of the gains came from new orders as inventories need to be rebuilt. The question now becomes, will buyers step up to take the newly produced goods off the shelf? Time will tell.
President Obama’s projected budget sets a new record deficit (1.516 trillion in 2010) as the new budget looks to be 3.8 trillion. Bailout costs for FNMA and FHLMC alone will be 153 billion. Wow.
Technically, note, bond, and MBS structure are in neutral as follow through to the upside (rally) is not in the cards. Bulls need the 8 day moving average (currently we’re sitting on it) at 3.65% to hold. We expect that area to hang in there into tomorrow. Traders will then make a move, one way or the other, on Wednesday and Thursday to hedge positions up for Friday’s Employment Report. Tough one to handicap as predictions on Nonfarm Payrolls and the Unemployment Rate are all over the map. Cautiously optimistic is the best we can come up with.
