Here we are at the end of a week that might as well have not begun.  At least in terms of offering any meaningful reasons for tuning in to bond market movements, it offered few, if any surprises--so few in fact, that we thought we might have seen this coming clearly enough to get a little snippy about it a full week ago!  Since there's nothing else to write about, here's some of that snipiness from last Friday:

Morning of April 13th:
Is someone or something going to take this thing back up to higher yields than 2.070?  Or is that supposed to be the ceiling now?  Find out 2 weeks from now when a bunch of inconsequential housing data leaves markets transfixed on 4/25's FOMC Announcement and Bernanke Press Conference, followed 2 days later by the first look at Q1 GDP.

MBS Recap April 13th:
There's little else to say beyond what's said in the most recent update at 1:43pm below.  As we've already noted, we think the market's eyes are turning toward 4/25's FOMC Announcement and Bernanke presser.  This afforded an opportunity for this week of trading to close out having held a rather narrow range.  We're not sure if the exact same range will prevail next week, but there's a fair chance that things will continue to seem restrained in some way until the following week.  As always, such thoughts assume an absence of 'tape-bomb'-style headlines.  

April 13th, 1:43pm Update:
With more than a little bit of resignation, we commented this morning on the sense that the current range trade in bond markets won't get its most potent bit of information until the April 25th FOMC Announcement, and that 10yr yields, by default, seemed stuck in a 2.07-1.96 range until then. Even though some headline events could nudge us out of that range between now and then, "relatively flat, and wholeheartedly uncommitted" feel like the dominant themes since last week's NFP miss. 

Cue the golf-claps...  But there's good news!  There's a chance that Murphy's law could create high drama today, due simply to the fact that high drama is so completely and utterly unlikely based on the calendar of non-existent events, well-established flatness lo these two painful weeks, and looming justification for said flatness in the form of next week's foreboding line up of top-shelf market movers.