Sometimes opening acts are surprisingly entertaining, or perhaps even moving.  But more often than not, the headliner is what you came to see and the opener is less than memorable.  Such is the case with Thursday and Friday.  On any other week, today's line-up of economic reports borders on impressive, but now that we've seen just how silent and sideways bond markets were willing to be when all was said and done with GDP and FOMC, it's clear they're not waiting with bated breath for the Jobless Claims, Incomes/Outlays, or Chicago PMI reports this morning.

Referring to Wednesday's session as "sideways" requires a bit of clarification.  There was actually an extraordinary amount of volatility intraday, and it was only by virtue of closing levels being relatively in line with Tuesday's closing levels that we'd begin to think of it as a sideways day.  As far as Thursday is concerned, there's less on tap to cause the same sort of ups and downs we saw on Wednesday.  That said, the "day before NFP Friday," regardless of its economic data, always has some chance of becoming the "lead off" day for the underlying directional biases.  At this point, any such lead-off would be an extra bearish sort of thing as it would once-again take us out of the longer term uptrend in yields that was only tested previously on NFP Friday in early January.

MBS Live Econ Calendar:

Week Of Mon, Jan 28 2012 - Fri, Feb 1 2012

Time

Event

Period

Unit

Forecast

Prior

Mon, Jan 28

08:30

Durable Goods

Dec

%

1.6

0.7

10:00

Pending sales change mm

Dec

%

0.6

1.7

13:00

2-Yr Note Auction

--

bl

35.0

--

Tue, Jan 29

09:00

Case Shiller Home Prices (20 City Month-Over-Month)

Nov

%

0.0

-0.1

10:00

Consumer confidence

Jan

--

64.0

65.1

13:00

5yr Treasury Auction

--

bl

35.0

--

Wed, Jan 30

07:00

Mortgage refinance index

w/e

--

--

4916.7

07:00

Mortgage market index

w/e

--

--

894.8

08:15

ADP National Employment

Jan

k

165

215

08:30

GDP Final

Q4

%

1.2

3.1

13:00

7-Yr Note Auction

--

bl

29.0

--

14:15

FOMC Announcement

N/A

%

--

0.25

Thu, Jan 31

07:30

Challenger layoffs

Jan

k

--

32.6

08:30

Personal income mm

Dec

%

0.8

0.6

08:30

Consumption, adjusted mm

Dec

%

0.3

0.4

08:30

Jobless Claims

w/e

K

350

330

09:45

Chicago PMI

Jan

--

50.5

51.6

Fri, Feb 1

08:30

Non-farm payrolls

Jan

k

155

155

08:30

Unemployment rate mm

Jan

%

7.8

7.8

08:58

Markit PMI

Jan

--

55.5

54.0

09:55

Consumer Sentiment

Jan

%

71.5

71.3

10:00

Construction spending

Dec

%

0.7

-0.3

10:00

ISM Manufacturing PMI

Jan

--

50.5

50.7

* mm: monthly | yy: annual | qq: quarterly | "w/e" in "period" column indicates a weekly report

* Q1: First Quarter | Adv: Advance Release | Pre: Preliminary Release | Fin: Final Release

* (n)SA: (non) Seasonally Adjusted

* PMI: "Purchasing Managers Index"