Not Quite The Rally You'd Expect, But a Rally Nonetheless

Today's vitals might be a bit confusing at first glance. Payrolls came in at -23k versus forecasts of 80k. At most moments in history, that would be worth a substantial rally. Today it was only worth 3bps in the 10yr and a quarter point in MBS. To be fair, it was worth even less without a late day drop in oil prices for unrelated reasons. But at this moment in history, low payroll counts are far more common and they're doing far less to influence the unemployment rate (case in point, today's FELL to 4.1% from 4.2%). This went a long way toward offsetting the drop in payrolls. Nonetheless, payrolls remain very important to traders even if economists have shifted more of their focus to other metrics.