DATE: Friday 03/07/2008 at 10:32 AM (Eastern)
The price of the bench-mark, continuous 10-yr futures contract dropped slightly at press time (rates rising slightly). Today’s momentum favors lower rates.
Earlier this morning bonds prices stuttered before running higher (rates running lower) on the payrolls numbers. The market had been looking for negative, but a little less so, so the rally will be less volitile.
February payrolls fell 63,000 as the January decline was revised to a stronger - 22,000. More telling is the 101,000 decline in private payrolls as the government added 38,000. Unexpectedly, the unemployment rate fell to 4.8% from 4.9% in January and a 5% high in December. The market will focus on the payrolls declines rather than the fall off in unemployment given the less reliable source for the unemployment data.
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