Steady Gains in the PM Hours

Steady Gains in the PM Hours

It’s common to see the effects of month/quarter-end trading most prominently in the PM hours and today’s quarter-end session was no exception. A glut of bond buying just after 12:30pm got the part started and yields bottomed out just before the 4pm NYSE close.  While 4pm is a time that’s associated with stocks, it has come to be the larger of the two closing bells for the bond market on month/quarter-end days for a variety of reasons (de-emphasis of CME pit over the years, increased prevalence of ETF trading, large portfolio rebalancing that involves both stock/bond ETFs, thus arguing for one unified closing mark time). From here, econ data should take the wheel although it’s always possible to see some new-month positions have an impact on the first day of a new month.