The Chicago 77

6 November 2009 ?Bonds opened up 12bps and have trended upwards to an impressive day change of up 31bps. The Labor Department announced that unemployment rose higher than expected. The 10.2% unemployment rate for October exceeded analysts’ predictions of a 9.9% rate.  This is the first time in 26 years that unemployment has topped the […]

5 November 2009 ?Bonds opened up 19bps today and have remained strong well into the afternoon with a day change of up 18bps. With a day to absorb yesterday?s news that the Fed will keep interest rates near zero, mortgage bonds have bounced back significantly today. It is expected that the Mortgage Backed Securities program […]

4 November 2009 ?Bonds opened today 3bps up and have ceded some ground this afternoon. They ended the day down 6bps. After the highly anticipated Federal Open Market Committee meeting, the Fed announced it will keep the Fed Funds Rate low for an extended period of time. Many economists predict the rates will stay close […]

16 October 2009 ?Bonds opened at 3bps today and have increased to 19bps this afternoon. If this holds, we may see the bonds continue to improve in the next few days. The rates have risen sharply from previous lows. Weaker than expected sales from GE and IBM have driven the Dow down 130 points today. […]

14 October 2009 ?Today’s bonds opened down 47bps and, after staging a rally, they were pushed back down. We are currently down 37bps and are testing resistance levels. As recommended in recent posts, locking was the bias since we reached a low point in mortgage rates on 10/2/2009. While rates are up slightly, these are […]

6 August 2009 ? Today the bond market opened up slightly around 6bps and are currently up 9bps. We had a slight movement down after the unemployment claims dropped, however dismal retail sales immediately turned the bonds back into the positive territory. We have had six straight weeks of decline in the moving average of […]

5 August 2009 – Today the bond market opened down 31 bps. On Monday and Tuesday combined the bond market was down a total of 94bps. The bond market then bounced back due to a weaker ISM report (46.4 versus the expected 48). Also more job losses were reported, expectations were for job losses to […]

3 August 2009 ? Today the mortgage backed bonds opened down 28 and continued to slide and are now currently down 59 bps. Last week we had a good rally with bonds as reported in the daily update and on Friday we hit a level of resistance which basically predicted this downturn this morning. The […]

29 July 2009 – Today the bonds opened up 29 bps. However by noon the bonds were up 12, which is a decrease of 9bps. By 12:15 the volatility hit that I discussed in yesterday’s update and the bonds are now down 10, which is a 31 bps drop for the day. This auction results […]

28 July 2009 ? What a day for bonds, this morning the bonds were up 3bps, and by Noon we were flying high with Day Change up 50 bps. However as I mentioned in my daily update last week, there were treasury auctions that were taking place this week of almost 210 billion which is […]

24 July 2009 ? The bonds really took a beating yesterday, finishing down 66bps. The pressure came from the rally in the stock market and the announcement of $115 billion in Treasury auctions next week. Today we opened up 6bps and are currently flat, which is a change of -6. Basically this will not impact […]

20 July 2009 ? Today the mortgage backed bonds opened down 6bps and continued to trend down before finally rebounding. They are currently (2 p.m.) up 13bps, which is an improvement of 31bps for the day. Again we are watching closely as the market may improve or at least hold steady during the next four […]

16 July 2009 ? Bonds opened up 25bps this morning and continued to improve. They are currently (1 p.m.) up 45bps and peaked earlier at a high of 66bps. A few reports that are affecting the bond market today would be the better than expected jobless claims. However there was an adjustment for the auto […]