MBS Day Ahead: Fun-Size Sell-Off Despite Weaker Data

The Retail Sales report is generally considered to be in the upper echelon of economic reports when it comes to bond market impact.  As such, it’s somewhat surprising to see bonds reacting negatively to a weaker-than-expected number.  But traders have their reasons.  These include a few bigger trades from bigger firms who were expecting an even weaker result in the data.  In turn, those trades provided leadership for more impressionable market participants.  They also helped yields crest the 1.25% technical level, thus resulting in some additional upward…