What Happened Last Week?
Bonds Hold Gains Despite Ongoing Recovery in Stocks
The stock market factored into the bond market’s performance on Friday. In pre-market trading, stocks managed a big bounce after NY Fed’s Williams spoke favorably about December’s rate cut potential. Bonds benefited from that comment initially, but the stock rally quickly forced bonds to find a floor for the day. From then on, stocks continued putting upward pressure on rates, but the net effect was that bonds simply held sideways whereas they might have otherwise continued to rally.
Source: Matthew Graham, Mortgage News Daily 11/21/2025)
What’s on the Agenda for This Week?
Overview
This is a holiday-shortened week.
Three Things
The three areas that have the greatest ability to impact MBS backend pricing this week are: (1) Retail Sales, (2) Inflation Nation and (3) Gobble Gobble.
(1) Retail Sales: The Retail Sales report from September that has been delayed will be this week, although real-time data from this week’s Black Friday Week will likely garner more attention from traders.
(2) Inflation Nation: The CPI for September was issued during the government shutdown, but the PPI side of things will hit Tuesday.
(3) Gobble Gobble: This is a holiday-shortened week with Thanksgiving on Thursday. The bond market is CLOSED on Thursday and then will reopen for a partial day on Friday and close EARLY at 2 pm ET. Basically, after lunch on Wednesday most bond traders are gone until Monday.
Treasury Dump
There are shorter-term Treasury auctions this week:
- 11/24: 2-year note.
- 11/25: 5-year note.
- 11/26: 7-year note.
Market Wrap-up
Rosie the Riveter
The headline Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey was very weak in the General Activity Index which slumped from -5.0 down to -10.4, however the Production Index shot up from 5.2 to 20.5.
Treasury Dump
Three days of dumping debt into the marketplace kicked off with today’s 2-year note auction. $69B went off at a high yield of 3.489% and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.68.
On Deck for Tomorrow
Retail Sales, PPI, Case Shiller HPI, FHFA HPI, Pending Home Sales, Richmond Fed Index, Consumer Confidence.