The hottest Fixed income Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Lawler: Update on MBS Yields and Spreads

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 239 implied HN points • 23 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Current-coupon agency MBS yields surged about 63 basis points since late February to roughly 5.44%, marking the largest three-week increase since October 2024 and the highest level since August 2025. This repricing followed global bond-market adjustments tied to the Iran War.
  2. MBS spreads to Treasuries widened significantly, with CCMBS/10-year near 105 bp and CCMBS/7-year near 124 bp, reaching their widest levels since December 2025. The spread widening largely reflects a sharp rise in actual and implied interest-rate volatility (MOVE Index).
  3. Treasury yields moved most in the belly of the curve, and the yield curve is now monotonically increasing from 6 months out to 20 years for the first time since May 2022. This indicates a broad shift toward higher medium- and longer-term yields.

Carnage In Private Credit Just Got Worse

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 33 implied HN points • 23 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. When multiple large funds start limiting withdrawals at the same time, it’s a clear red flag that private credit is under serious stress.
  2. Credit markets just got worse very recently, indicating conditions are deteriorating quickly beneath the surface.
  3. Big headlines and feel-good market rallies can mask these problems, leaving investors distracted while credit strains build.

Plumbing Notes: Nothing Ever Happens

Concoda • 297 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Dollar funding markets are very calm now: money market volatility has fallen and overnight rates across repo, FX swaps, and unsecured markets have settled at a lower equilibrium.
  2. Higher interbank volumes and declining repo rates have kept the SOFR–FF basis narrow and swap spreads less negative, signaling easier plumbing even though further moves remain possible.
  3. The Fed’s shift away from QT toward reserve injections has compressed rates and volatility (the “Great Compression”), which is good for policy stability but has reduced trading opportunities and left few attractive relative-value trades.

Lawler: Update on MBS Yields and Spreads

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 181 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Current-coupon MBS yields jumped to their highest since last September and CCMBS/Treasury spreads widened to levels not seen since December as surging oil prices and war-related uncertainty pushed overall interest rates up.
  2. Implied interest-rate and equity volatility (MOVE and VIX) spiked, and higher rate volatility tends to raise MBS yields versus Treasuries because the mortgages’ embedded prepayment option becomes more costly to investors.
  3. A prior announcement that GSEs would buy about $200 billion of MBS briefly tightened spreads, but since then CCMBS yields are roughly 21 basis points higher and spreads 10–13 bp wider, so investors buying alongside GSEs should have a clear exit strategy.

Infographics: Treasury Buybacks

Concoda • 281 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. A set of infographics explains the flows and step‑by‑step mechanics of Treasury buybacks in a clear, visual way.
  2. The content is image‑heavy and uses large, detailed graphics that are best viewed on desktop with click‑to‑enlarge options.
  3. These infographics were created as part of an upcoming project called The Warsh Ultimatum.
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Lawler: Update on MBS Yields and Spreads

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 263 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Mortgage-backed security yields fell when 10-year Treasuries briefly dropped below 4%, but MBS spreads to Treasuries widened and are now about as wide or wider than before the GSE purchase announcement.
  2. Spreads had narrowed earlier due to very low rate volatility and expectations that GSEs were buying more MBS, yet rising implied and actual interest-rate volatility has pushed spreads wider again as markets reassess how sustainable the tight spreads are.
  3. January GSE holdings rose only modestly (Freddie ~$3.9B, Fannie ~$11.5B), but those monthly figures show settled purchases only and don’t reflect commitments that would mostly settle in February or later, so they don’t reveal the true pace of GSE buying.

Why I Have Doubts About The “Next Global Financial Crisis”

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 26 implied HN points • 19 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The private credit market is showing real strain—rising defaults and capped redemptions—but it’s much smaller than the old subprime market, so it probably won’t by itself spark a global financial crisis.
  2. Banks are still at risk because they lend to private credit funds and already carry big unrealized bond losses and weak commercial loans, so losses in private credit could still spill over and hurt the banking system.
  3. A straightforward defensive step is to keep cash in ultra-short Treasury bills via TreasuryDirect to avoid bank counterparty risk while maintaining liquidity.

Plumbing Notes: Repo 101

Concoda • 594 implied HN points • 25 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. A repo is a short-term cash loan secured by securities; GC (triparty) repos use pooled high-quality collateral on BNY’s triparty platform, while SC (DVP/bilateral) repos move specific securities over Fedwire for trading needs.
  2. The market is split by how trades clear and settle: cleared interdealer venues go through the FICC (GCF and DVP), uncleared segments (triparty and NCCBR) serve different counterparties, and sponsored/agent clearing services are shifting activity toward central clearing to reduce systemic risk.
  3. Four overnight benchmarks capture key funding lanes—o/n TPR (triparty), o/n GC (GCF), o/n DVP (cleared DVP), and o/n NCCBR (uncleared bilateral)—and dealers routinely borrow in one segment (often from money funds) and lend across the others.

Infographics: Key Rates & Spreads In the Modern Repo Market

Concoda • 216 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The infographic lays out the key repo market interest rates that set the cost of short‑term secured funding. It gives a quick visual sense of how those rates behave in the modern market.
  2. It highlights the average spreads dealers earn on repo trades, showing that dealers capture consistent compensation differences across repo types and counterparties. This makes dealer economics a clear part of repo pricing.
  3. The figures are presented in the context of the Fed’s new policy target, implying these rates and spreads matter for monetary operations and market functioning. That connection suggests changes in Fed policy will affect repo dynamics.

Infographics: The Modern Repo Market

Concoda • 329 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. A large, detailed infographic maps how cash and collateral move through the modern repo market around 2026.
  2. The chart is best downloaded and viewed on a high-resolution device; start at the green "start here" box in the top-right, follow flows right-to-left, and consult the legend to learn the terminology.
  3. A follow-up write-up will unpack the chart and explain the mechanics and jargon in more detail.

Unpopular Quick Take

Points And Figures • 453 implied HN points • 21 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The ten‑year Treasury yield is high largely because demand for debt is strong as the economy expands, not because of runaway inflation.
  2. Corporate capex is rising due to tax incentives like full expensing and big AI investments, which is pushing firms to borrow more and support higher long‑term rates.
  3. Traditional inflation signals and manufacturing are cooling — CPI and commodity prices are down and ISM is in contraction — so growth appears driven by investment and productivity gains rather than broad consumer inflation or big hiring waves.

Another One Bites The Dust

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 44 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Illiquid private loans can go from being valued at full price to worthless very quickly because they’re priced by internal models instead of daily market bids.
  2. A lot of pandemic-era, highly leveraged e-commerce rollups are failing as interest rates rise and demand softens, creating real borrower distress and loan defaults.
  3. Multiple sudden write-downs plus growing investor redemption requests could force a rapid, broader repricing of the large private credit market and stress funds built for slow-moving assets.

The Fed's New Target: Part I

Concoda • 281 implied HN points • 10 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The Fed is moving away from targeting an unsecured overnight fed‑funds rate and toward a secured repo benchmark as its main policy rate to reduce volatility and strengthen control over money markets.
  2. The Fed has started large reserve injections and new permanent open‑market operations that have compressed overnight money‑market rates and prevented year‑end plumbing stress.
  3. As a result, banks’ balance sheets are set to expand, the repo market will become central to rate setting, and the unsecured interbank market’s role is likely to shrink.

Two Tribes

Net Interest • 32 implied HN points • 27 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Bond and equity traders behave like two distinct tribes with different cultures and priorities; bond traders prize seriousness and protecting principal while equity traders chase upside, and their relative status has shifted over time.
  2. Banks act as transformation engines that turn debt into equity by holding portfolios of loans and bonds funded partly by shareholders, so you need to look at fixed income to understand banks.
  3. Analysts warn a rapid AI-driven shock could sharply raise defaults — UBS projects high yield 3–6%, leveraged loans 8–10% and private credit 14–15% — risking contagion into public credit markets. That outcome would strain capital adequacy at financial institutions, and private credit vehicles and BDCs are already showing early signs of stress.

Infographics: The Fed's Repo Rate "Sweet Spot"

Concoda • 286 implied HN points • 28 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The Fed wants repo rate benchmarks to sit in a narrow "sweet spot" just below the Interest on Reserve Balances (IORB) rate.
  2. It will actively force those repo rates to print inside that zone, even when market pressures push them elsewhere.
  3. Opposing forces can move repo benchmarks off-target, but the Fed intends to counteract them to keep rates anchored just below IORB.

Investing Update: The Most Important Chart in the Market

Spilled Coffee • 32 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Gold is soaring (+21.2% YTD) and other defensive assets like oil (+17.2% YTD) and bonds are outperforming, showing investors are favoring safety over growth.
  2. Market breadth is deteriorating even as headline indexes sit near highs — technology, financials, and consumer discretionary are negative YTD and fewer than 60% of stocks in those sectors trade above their 50-day moving averages, signaling narrow leadership and fragility.
  3. Overall sentiment is risk-off: a VIX-based signal, the big YTD drop in Bitcoin (~25%), and close attention to names like Nvidia underline a cautious stance and active rotation away from growth.

Our Liquidity Addiction Continues

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 21 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The Fed has begun a modest, ongoing balance-sheet expansion—buying short-dated Treasuries to keep banks flush with reserves and control short-term rates—which is a "gradual print" that should be mildly supportive for asset prices and mildly dollar-negative.
  2. Severe shocks like a recession, a large-scale financial or kinetic conflict, or sudden foreign sell-offs could force much larger, faster Fed purchases measured in the trillions, while a change in Fed leadership might try to shrink the balance sheet but would only have limited, mostly technical effects.
  3. Japan’s rising bond yields are a real risk but not an immediate systemic collapse: the BOJ owns a large share of the debt and Japan has big FX reserves and a current-account surplus, so policymakers have tools (yield-curve control, reserve sales) to manage it; investors should favor high-quality, scarce assets and rebalance away from overheated areas.

Lawler: Some Comments About Upcoming GSE MBS Purchases and an Update on Mortgage/MBS Yields and Spreads

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 33 implied HN points • 13 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The announcement that the GSEs would buy $200 billion of MBS sharply tightened MBS/Treasury spreads and pushed current-coupon MBS yields down, even producing a briefly negative option-adjusted spread.
  2. The $200 billion figure likely matches the GSEs' room under the Treasury agreement, so they will probably fund purchases by issuing debt and reallocating Treasury holdings and hedge with longer-dated instruments; because spreads are so tight, debt‑financed MBS could have low or negative risk‑adjusted returns, so investors should plan an exit strategy.
  3. Model estimates of the real neutral fed funds rate imply a nominal neutral range roughly in the low to mid 3% area depending on inflation expectations, so the Fed’s current 3.5%–3.75% target is around or slightly above neutral.

26 Stocks I'm Watching For 2026: Part 1

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 53 implied HN points • 23 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. High-conviction thematic bets — especially nuclear energy, precious metals, rare earths, and junior miners — powered huge outperformance in 2025, showing the payoff from concentrated exposure to structural themes.
  2. Heading into 2026 there are five major risks to watch: a tapped-out American consumer and rising delinquencies, frothy AI-driven valuations, an erosion of the passive bid, crypto’s growing systemic ties, and geopolitical moves pushing investors into hard assets.
  3. Two market regimes are plausible next year — a liquidity-fueled bull where policymakers prop up nominal prices, or a reality-driven bear with deleveraging — so focus on relative performance, favoring international/EM and metals as hedges rather than long-duration or richly priced U.S. equities.

Lawler: Median Existing Home Sales Prices: Oops, They Did It Again

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 23 implied HN points • 14 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. The NAR sharply revised up its November median existing-home prices—especially in the Northeast—so preliminary numbers understated recent price gains and further revisions are possible.
  2. Because the NAR released its report earlier than usual, local realtor/MLS data were limited and some sales and inventory figures (for example versus Realtor.com) look inconsistent or may reflect definitional changes.
  3. Most of the recent rise in 30‑year mortgage rates comes from a wider primary/secondary mortgage spread driven by higher GSE guarantee fees and increased servicing/origination and regulatory costs, while higher MBS yields account for only about 3 basis points of the roughly 57 bp increase.

No Fucking Idea: My Take On Markets Into 2026

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 50 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Markets are very uncertain for 2026: either a liquidity-fueled rally lifts prices regardless of weak fundamentals, or a slow-burn downturn hits as consumer debt and delinquencies worsen.
  2. Political pressure on the Fed could lead to premature rate cuts that damage policy credibility, raise inflation expectations, and push markets toward extreme steps like yield-curve control.
  3. Even with macro risk and noisy year-end forecasts, there will be overlooked pockets of opportunity where active hunting for underpriced assets can produce asymmetric upside.

Five Decades Of Currency Rot: Lyn Alden

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 26 implied HN points • 05 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Currency debasement is a long-running, multi-decade trend that accelerated after currencies were decoupled from gold, and it has generally boosted asset prices and favored people who own assets over those who rely mainly on labor.
  2. The real pain for savers comes from interest-adjusted debasement — when money supply grows faster than bond yields, bondholders lose purchasing power, as seen in the big debasement spikes around 2020–21.
  3. The era of steadily falling long-term interest rates is likely over, so debasement may continue but with a weaker tailwind for valuations; bonds may still lose value in real terms but not as rapidly, and investors should expect different relative performance across stocks, gold, crypto, and housing.

Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in November and Update on Mortgage/MBS Yields and Spreads

CalculatedRisk Newsletter • 19 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. Existing home sales likely ran at a 4.10 million seasonally adjusted annual rate in November, unchanged from October and about 1.7% below last November; median single-family prices were roughly 1.9% higher year-over-year.
  2. Current-coupon MBS spreads to Treasuries are very low — near late‑2022 levels — driven by unusually low interest-rate volatility and speculation that GSEs will keep buying MBS.
  3. There is concern GSEs are ramping up debt‑financed MBS purchases at the FHFA’s direction; those purchases may be politically motivated, not profitable given low spreads, and not in the public’s financial interest.

The comeback of European growth stocks

Klement on Investing • 3 implied HN points • 28 Jan 26
đź’° Finance Fixed income
  1. European growth stocks are staging a comeback, with renewed investor interest in growth names across the region.
  2. Over shorter horizons of about one year, share prices are far more sensitive to changes in government bond yields than to earnings or valuation shifts.
  3. For near-term investors, movements in bond yields will often drive returns more than earnings improvements or valuation changes, so watching yields matters most.