The Day Ahead: ECB Announcement and Jobless Claims

Heading into and out of the first Friday of most months, it's common to see volatility swell and ebb around the Employment Situation Report.  Granted, in some instances, there are other considerations of sufficient size to throw that conventional wisdom out the door, but all other things being equal, it generally holds true.  Looking at the last part of January and the first part of February, we may be able to see some of this phenomenon in play, but certainly, we know we've had other market moving considerations.  Through whatever combination of post-NFP cooling down and "other considerations," stocks and bonds have both been consolidating their trading ranges for the past two days.

Not much has been made of today's ECB Announcement.  The lack of attention may justified, or part of the consolidative patterns seen above could be markets' way of circling the wagons to see what kind of show will be put on.  If the ECB doesn't do it, perhaps the first domestic economic data of the week is the ticket (Factory Orders and ISM non-manufacturing weren't of enough interest to include).  Today brings Jobless Claims at 8:30am.  These were largely overlooked last week in favor of juxtaposed heavy-hitters.  

The problem here is that Jobless Claims would have to speak quite loudly in order to be heard over Draghi's press conference which is the only place tomorrow's ECB news could possibly matter (barring surprises in the announcement).  Additionally, there's a ton of European data in the overnight session, as well as the inception of a potentially headline-producing EU Summit in Brussels.  Bottom line, this is the official "memo" that the EU is back on the table for discussion, and all it took was an absolutely stone silent week of domestic data and events to do it (though this morning's domestic data does have a fighting chance vs the week's previous offerings).