My 12-year old emails me from the next room when he's doing homework sometimes.  It only happens a few times a year and only when it's really serious.  Last night it was to ask if I was aware that "they" might impeach Trump today.  Without trying to be too dismissive, I effectively said 'yes, only about 1439 times in the last week.'

"Isn't that crazy?  Isn't that a big deal?" he said.

I'll tell you the same thing I told him.  Impeachment is always the sort of thing that sounds like a big deal because the word is associated with the removal of the president from office.  But actual removal relies on votes that don't exist in the senate.  Those votes have never existed and they never will.

Because of that, market participants (most of who are not stupid) couldn't care much less about the political theater surrounding the impeachment process.  At the very least, and without a shadow of a doubt, I can tell you traders aren't trading any differently based on the risk of Trump's removal.

But there is a paradoxical side effect to consider.  I've heard the notion and I don't totally disagree that an impeachment brought about by a democratic house that ultimately fails quickly in the senate only serves to strengthen Trump's chances of reelection (though not as much as the Democrats' odd decision to bring a bag of knives--some of them quite dull--to Trump's gun fight).  Meaningful shifts in Trump's odds of reelection CAN actually have an impact on the market, though parsing those ifs and thens would be a very tall order.  All I could confidently say is that some traders would definitely be moving money if they knew Trump would certainly or certainly not be reelected.  

The bottom line for right now though is that the impeachment business is not an overt, direct market mover.  Not much else is either!  Granted, we can see small, token reactions from key pieces of economic data, but for the most part, traders are already on the final descent into the winter holiday airport.  It continues to be the case that seemingly random tradeflows from accounts merely wrapping up 2019's business can have a bigger effect than anything, especially when they prompt breaks beyond various technical levels that bring a litany of algorithmic trades along for the ride (i.e. human trading trips the trigger and robots follow as if it's a legit momentum shift).

The key technical level to watch today is 1.95% in 10yr yields.  It was aggressively tested overnight and early this morning, but appears to be holding as domestic trading gets underway.