The spread between 30Y Treasury yields and 10Y yields tumbled 4-5bps today post-FOMC back to its flattest in 4 weeks as hawkish sentiment sparked bond-selling out to 10Y and buying at the long-end. The reason this is notable is that yesterday, as Nanex details, there were two "monster" sized trades in 10Y and 30Y Treasury Futures putting on a significant steepening bet.

Overall market reaction so far…

Curve flattening post FOMC…

This is interesting though…

Meaning the following trade is hurting… (via Nanex)

Record Treasury Futures Trades

Monster buy in the 10-Year and sale in the 30-Year a day before FOMC

On October 28, 2014, there were two monster sized trades in Treasury Futures, a 26000+ contract trade (sale) in the 30-Year T-Bond (ZB) at 12:08:23 and a 29000+ contract trade (buy) in the 10-Year T-Notes (ZN) at 12:17:42. We know the 10-Year trade set a record for most contracts traded in 1 second for that contract since at least 2005 (the 30-Year may have as well, but we haven't completed a thorough check of the data).

What made this event even more interesting, was that an equivalent huge order in the opposite direction first appeared 3 minutes before the trade in the 30-Year and exactly 2 minutes before the trade in the 10-Year. That is, buy orders totaling about 27000 contracts started appearing in 9000 contract lots at 12:05:21 in the 30-Year – which were executed against by a large 26000+ contract sell order just over 3 minutes later, at 12:08:23. In the 10-Year, sell orders in lots of 9500 contracts started appearing at 12:15:42 and were executed against exactly 2 minutes later at 12:17:42. The two charts below show this sequence of events.

1. Depth of book for the 30-Year (ZB, left) and the 10-Year (ZN, right). (how to read these charts).
The white vertical lines in the middle of the top section are trades. There are 10 levels of bids and 10 levels of offers – each color coded by how many contracts are available to instantly buy or sell. The red indicates the highest relative to other levels. Most of the levels are deep blue because they are practically empty, relatively speaking, when compared to those huge orders in the top few levels.

2. Chart of the most contracts offered for sale in the top 3 depth of book levels for every second since 2008 in the 10-Year Treasury Contract (ZN).
Each day is drawn as one line from left (starting at midnight or 0:00) to right (and ending at midnight 24:00). Days are color coded by age – with red being the most recent and violet the oldest – with the exception of October 28, 2014 which is a thick purple line for contrast. Since at least 2008, there has never been as many contracts for sale in the top 3 levels of CME's depth of book for the 10-Year Treasury Contract.