AM Rally Ultimately Sticks With Help From Oil

AM Rally Ultimately Sticks With Help From Oil

To be clear, most of today's rally is attributable to the news on the Treasury buyback program discussed in the morning commentary. Today's consumer rate commentary also has a useful set of bullet points to recap the changes. Ultimately, the buyback news simply meant that the shortest-term debt suffered at the expense of longer-term debt. To put this in perspective, consider that 30yr yields are almost 10bps lower than they were at the open whereas 2yr yields are actually a few bps higher. If today's news was truly akin to QE or any sort of accommodation goal, we would not be seeing such trade-offs in the yield curve. Last but not least, oil prices made a round trip today from the lows of the day this morning at 8:35am to highs at 1pm and back down near the lows by the close. That ebb and flow coincided with intraday bond market volatility almost perfectly.  

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AM Rally Ultimately Sticks With Help From Oil

MBS & Treasury Markets
UMBS 5.5
99.57
0.00 
10YR TREASURY
4.644
-0.003 
8/20/2026 2:14AM EST
MBS are still an eighth of a point higher on the day, but down 5 ticks (.16) from the AM highs. Those highs happened fairly close to the earliest lenders' rate sheet print times. As such, negative reprices can't be ruled out completely even though it would probably take another tick or two of weakness for the average lender to pull the trigger.    READ MORE
Today's Mortgage Rates
30YR Fixed
6.72%
-0.03% 
15YR Fixed
6.27%
-0.04% 
8/19/2026
Mortgage rates dropped on Wednesday due to a combination of lower oil prices and the announcement of changes to Treasury's bond buyback program. The oil price angle is easy to understand. Throughout the war, higher fuel prices have caused volatility in inflation expectations and inflation is a critical consideration for bonds/rates.  The Treasury buyback news is more complex and highly oversimplified by the average piece of media coverage. Here are the details that ...   READ MORE
Economic Calendar
Time Event Period Actual Forecast Prior
Thursday, Aug 20
8:30AM Aug/15 Jobless Claims (k) Aug/15 210K 209K
8:30AM Aug Philly Fed Prices Paid Aug 53.90
8:30AM Aug/08 Continued Claims (k) Aug/08 1790K 1777K
8:30AM Aug Philly Fed Business Index Aug 25 41.4
10:00AM Jul CB Leading Index MoM (%) Jul 0.1% -0.2%
1:00PM 30-Yr Bond Auction (bl) 8
Friday, Aug 21
9:45AM Aug S&P Global Services PMI Aug 54 54.6
9:45AM Aug S&P Global Manuf. PMI Aug 53.9 53.9
9:45AM Aug S&P Global Composite PMI Aug 54.5