Whales Making Waves in Treasury Futures

Whales Making Waves in Treasury Futures

Nerd alert: there's no way to discuss what happened in the bond market today without getting a bit nerdy. Reason being, there was an absolute deluge of block trades in Treasury futures (over $20bln--the biggest day we can remember for outright block trades). There are a few different possibilities for how this went down, but the size, structure, and timing of those trades suggests that only one or two massive players were involved. The saving grace of a move like this is that it means there was not broad-based selling pressure from a majority of the market. And although this could be viewed as "thought leadership" that inspires other sellers, those sellers had a chance to jump on the bandwagon today and instead held their ground. 

Latest Video Analysis

Huge Block Trades Drove Big AM Sell-Off

MBS & Treasury Markets
UMBS 5.0
97.37
-0.04 
10YR TREASURY
4.589
+0.001 
5/18/2026 9:50PM EST
We're sending this out as an "update" as opposed to an alert to acknowledge the supportive trading seen in the past hour. In other words, it looks like bonds may have found their footing for now.  But this morning has a weird trading pattern which has basically been a freefall in bond prices from the outset. Typically, such freefalls are mostly over by the time lender rate sheets come out. This one, however, was still in progress. That means that lender pricing str...   READ MORE
Today's Mortgage Rates
30YR Fixed
6.75%
+0.07% 
15YR Fixed
6.25%
+0.13% 
5/19/2026
It was another rough day for the bond market and, thus, for interest rates . Investors aggressively sold bonds in the first 2 hours of trading, taking 10yr Treasury yields to the highest level in more than a year. Mortgage-specific bonds have been doing better versus Treasuries in recent months thanks to increased purchase demand from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. All else equal, higher demand for mortgage bonds = lower rates, relatively. In the current case, it means mortg...   READ MORE
Economic Calendar
Time Event Period Actual Forecast Prior
Tuesday, May 19
12:00AM Roll Date - Ginnie Mae 30YR
8:15AM ADP Employment Change Weekly 42.25K 33.0K
9:00AM Fed Waller Speech
10:00AM Apr Pending Home Sales (%) Apr 1.4% 1% 1.5%
11:30AM 6-Week Bill Auction (%) 3.580% 3.615%
7:00PM Fed Paulson Speech
7:30PM Fed Venable Speech
Wednesday, May 20
7:00AM May/15 Mortgage Market Index May/15 290.1
7:00AM May/15 MBA Refi Index May/15 921.1
7:00AM May/15 MBA Purchase Index May/15 177.7
8:00AM Fed Paulson Speech
10:15AM Fed Barr Speech
10:30AM May/15 Crude Oil Inventory (ml) May/15 -4.306M
1:00PM 20-Yr Bond Auction (bl) 16
2:00PM FOMC Minutes