Scientists have been hard at work and are close to distilling today's MBS trading action into pill form.  Shares of Sepracor and Aventis fell sharply on that news on fears the new pill would render all competing sleep-aids obsolete.  Yes folks, this has been, without a doubt, the slowest and lowest-volume trading day in recent memory.  With very light scheduled data this week, a half day on Friday, and a big summer-hearkening holiday weekend, many market participants expected this to a certain extent, but what we are seeing today is appaling.  I don't even remember the last time the 4.5% coupon traded in a THREE tick range for an entire day (you read that right: THREE TICK RANGE!). 

I suppose we could put up some more charts, but they don't really mean much since they only represent the trading sentiments of the 2 and a half people today that actually executed an MBS trade.  Furthermore, notwithstanding the strain on credulity, would you believe treasuries and stocks were basically unchanged as well?  Scientists considered adding that to the pill, but then decided they just wanted to put people to sleep, not induce comas. 

Here's the overall picture, which is actually so far from being worth a thousand words (negative equity) that it has qualified for a bailout:

We'll let you know if anything interesting happens in the last few hours of trading, but it won't.

As far as hopes that things can pick up tomorrow?  Yes perhaps...  The headline even is the FOMC minutes at 200pm  EST.  Other than the Purchase Applications report first thing in the AM, the rest of day is pretty sparse.  Thursday is really our only hope for some meaningful queues on directionality should tomorrow's minutes fail to impress as scheduled data picks up and it's the last full day of the week before the for-all-intents-and-purposes FOUR day weekend.