The Day Ahead: Pace Quickens With Additional EU Data, Fed Speakers

It's an admittedly light week in terms of domestic economic data.  Not only are the reports few, but those we do get aren't the most urgent market movers at present.  Yesterday's Empire State Manufacturing report was no exception.  At face value, one might consider that certain components being at their weakest levels in 3+ years would be a significant enough occurrence to register a detectable response in trading levels, but alas... 

Today may be no better as far as the economic data at home is concerned, but at least there's more of it.  The Current Account (a quarterly report on the trade deficit) is first up at 8:30am, followed by a similarly backward-looking report in the form of Treasury International Capital or TIC (measures inflows and outflows of various Treasury securities to international accounts) at 9:00am.  Finally at 10am, though not well-known for moving markets, the NAHB Housing Market Index is at least somewhat relevant to mortgage markets.  It's interesting to see where this one is going as it's recently suggested that the housing market recovery is underway (we're not sure what it means, but we're sure it's interesting that the latest upswing began last August just when rates started plummeting and the Fed committed to MBS "Twisting."):

Apart from the domestic data--questionably relevant though it might be, there's a slew of European data to get things kicked off overnight, including the often noteworthy German ZEW Economic Sentiment.  Spain remains rife for all manner of bailout headline as the EU is generally seen pressuring Spain to "request" a bailout while Spain is generally seen to be hesitant.  This weird sort of stalemate actually drove Spanish yields higher yesterday and the longer the world goes believing ("knowing" even) that Spain needs a bailout, and the longer Spain goes without admitting it, the more Euro-drama could be in store.

Finally, there's the inception of a busy rest-of-the-week of Fed speakers.  Uber dove and non-voter Evans is up at 8am with Voters Dudley and Lacker later in the day.  Lacker actually won't hit newswires during domestic market hours tomorrow, but he already got his shots in over the weekend, lambasting the QE3 decision in remarks on Saturday.  This was a complete shock as he's dissented on every vote so far this year.