The Day Ahead: Moderate Data and Treasury Auction Planning a Sneaky Trick

With very limited data and an early close on Friday, today will serve as the last trading day of the week in many regards.  For starters, it's the last of the Treasury coupon auctions, this time 7yr Notes at 1pm.  Yesterday's 5yr auction was almost completely uneventful though, though we're cognizant of fact that markets' interest had perked up a bit about European headlines after the morning shocker that Eurozone officials told members to make contingency plans for a Greek Eurozone exit.

 So a fuller reaction could have been muted by impending or anticipated events, but we still wonder how much markets even care about the 7yr issuance, and indeed how much they care about the ongoing demonstration of that which is already known--US Treasuries are in high demand as a safe-haven.

Data too, fell on deaf ears as we'd generally expect this morning's offering of Durable Goods and Jobless Claims to do.  That said, we DO see one sort of sneaky way that econ data and the auction could cause some movement.

"The Sneaky Way..."

No one cares about anything but Europe and Fed policy these days, right?  Ok, perhaps a slight overstatement, but a surprisingly small one!  <nervous laugh>  And the bigger ticket EU event of the week is in the rearview (we think... but who knows really...) with the passing of yesterday's pre-summit summit.  

So apart from next week's NFP, which comes into play as a key informant of the "Fed Policy" part of the equation, there's not much left to do between now and mid June but to trade a range while waiting to see how the FOMC Announcement will pan out as well as Greek elections.  

Therefore, why not use the economic data in the interim to motivate the movements within the range?  In other words, market movement may well coincide with today's data releases, but don't be fooled.  Durable Goods and Jobless claims arent' going to change the Fed's mind on QE3, and they certainly aren't going to trump all the Grexit talk.  

(Yes... that's the first time we've actually succumbed to the usage of the term 'Grexit' to more succinctly refer to the potential Greek Euro-Zone Exit.  We're not proud, and frankly, feel like we should go wash up, or something, but might use it again so that we can sound like we're in the know...)