There continues to be little to do or say about the first two days of the week.  For the most part, they merely serve as a sort of cruel waiting game (or torture rack)  ahead of Wednesday's FOMC events.  Those events include the Bernanke testimony to the Joint Economic Committee in the morning and of course the hotly anticipated FOMC Minutes at 2pm in the afternoon.    

In fact, ever since the Employment report on 5/3 set a negative trend adrift, there hasn't been one singular big-ticket event on the calendar that to inform or change the drift.  The biggest swings have been tradeflow related, and we now find ourselves surprisingly in line with the original post-NFP trends from earlier in the month:

Even the bigger picture trend has returned to it's mid-point.  In fact, seeking out such a central zone is a nimble, logical move ahead of eagerly-anticipated events.   The fact that we've seen two days recently with big swings that explore both ends of a central range (those are in the teal oval area below) speaks to the level of indecision and uncertainty, but also to some level of determination to hold that central zone.  

Granted, this is just one way to looks at things, and a bearish one at that, but the notion of this long-standing uptrend in rates "fits" well with what's gone one so far.  Even so, technical indicators do a much better job of telling you that something has ALREADY happened as opposed to what will happen in the future.  Because of that, we'll know much more about this one after Wednesday.  A visit to either end of this range isn't out of the question in the next 3 days.

MBS Live Econ Calendar:

Week Of Mon, May 20 2013 - Fri, May 23 2013

Time

Event

Period

Unit

Forecast

Prior

Mon, May 20 - Tue May 21

--

No Significant Scheduled Data

--

--

--

--

Wed, May 22

07:00

Mortgage market index

w/e

--

--

876.6

10:00

Existing home sales

Apr

ml

5.00

4.92

10:00

Exist. home sales % chg

Apr

%

1.5

-0.6

14:00

FOMC Minutes

--

--

--

--

Thu, May 23

08:30

Initial Jobless Claims

w/e

K

346

360

08:58

Markit Manufacturing PMI

Mar

%

52.0

52.1

09:00

Monthly Home Price mm

Mar

%

0.9

0.7

10:00

New home sales-units mm

Apr

ml

0.425

0.417

13:00

10yr TIPS Auction

--

--

--

--

Fri, May 24

08:30

Durables Goods Orders

Apr

%

1.6

-6.9

* 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"