The shutdown has not only placed more emphasis on the alternative data that was already in the rotation, but also fueled interest in new sources. One that you'll likely hear more about in the coming months is Revelio Labs, a company using data aggregation and modeling to synthesize it's own version of nonfarm payrolls.  While it's far from an exact match, the trends are similar, and Revelio's data is less volatile (much like ADP always has been). All that to say, there's no great way to justify this morning's rally in bonds without the Revelio release at 8:30am ET, which showed a decline in monthly job creation.

It would be easy to mistake today's rally as a product of an extremely high number of layoffs reported by the firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas (aka Challenger Job Cut Report or "Challenger Layoffs"). But note that Challenger was released several hours early in the overnight session.  It definitely had an impact, but bonds went right back to business as usual shortly thereafter.