The Day Ahead: Jobs Report and Hammering Out Greek PSI Details

Yesterday's Jobless Claims report--the day's only piece of domestic economic data--proved to be a non-event, with markets instead focusing on trading the Fed's scheduled buying and Greek PSI headlines.  

But where employment data was inconsequential yesterday, the polar opposite is true of this morning's Employment Situation Report (NFP) at 8:30am, seen falling from 243k to 210k and holding steady at 8.3% unemployment.  

Although NFP is the focus, January's International Trade report is out at the same time.  Economists surveyed by Reuters see very little change from December's $48.8 billion deficit, predicting a $49 billion deficit for January.  Wholesale Inventories hit at 10am and are seen decelerating from a 1.0% rate of improvement to 0.6% with Wholesale Sales falling from 1.3% to 0.8%

Much like yesterday, Greek debt swap headlines remain a factor.  Yesterday's swap deadline resulted in just over 85% voluntary participation, and just over 95% if Collective-Action-Clauses are invoked, which has not yet occurred.  Greece will meet with Euro-zone finance ministers at 2pm Brussels time today to decide on activating CACs or not.  

The ISDA is expected to vote on whether or not the activation of CACs would constitute a "credit event"--assuming that's the decision coming out of the Eurogroup meeting--with the real goal of determining whether or not Credit-Default-Swaps should be triggered.

Bond Markets were quiet in the overnight session with volume slightly below average.  10yr yields are just under 2.02% and Fannie 3.5's (which rolled yesterday afternoon) are unchanged at 103-03.