The Day Ahead: One More Session To Endure Before Thursday

Carrying on with the question posed at the beginning of the week regarding "confirming apathy" or "discovering organic motivation," if we're to have any of the latter, it has yet to show up.  In other words, no tangible data or headlines have been able to motivate much movement.  Ergo, we've either yet to discover what might actually have the power to do such a thing or we can simply assume it's one of several big ticket events coming up in the near future.

Nearest--at least in terms of big-ticket events--would be Thursday's EU Summit, followed by a slightly less near FOMC Announcement next week.  Forgetting next week's FOMC and focusing instead on the current week, we can't help but look at the Euro zone headline mill as quintessentially "hit or miss."  Sometimes, something will come out of an EU Summit that really gets the lemmings stampeding toward the cliffs of insanity, while other times, markets seem to be anticipating something fairly definitive only to be majorly let down.

All that having been said, it could be good to remember it's only Wednesday today.  Darn...  That's somewhat disappointing because if Monday and Tuesday's data and events did almost nothing to motivate bond markets, then Wednesday's line-up offers precious little other than being the last day before Thursday! 

To be fair, there is data today, and it's housing/mortgage-related to boot!  But as much as we appreciate the nearness and dearness to the industry, today's data wouldn't necessarily be first pick on our kickball team of likely market movers.  With us as always is the MBA's report on mortgage applications bright and early.  The official government data arrives at 8:30am with Housing Starts and Building Permits.  Housing Starts are forecast at 770k vs 750k previously.  If they manage to crush that estimate and hit 790k it would be "tremendously exciting" news as we'd finally have made it back to the lowest, most awful Housing Starts reading in history prior to the mortgage crisis!

Bottom line: is is Thursday yet?  Not only do we get the EU Summit, but also some potential clarity on last week's weird Jobless Claims report.  Granted, we don't see anything jumping out at us today, but that's not to say markets won't "lead off" in either direction before Thursday's (probably) more significant data.