MBS Day Ahead: Back Against The Wall Again for Bonds: Auction Today or Data Tomorrow?

Sometimes after the last Treasury auction of any given week, we see a so-called "relief rally" where traders who were cautious, hesitant, or otherwise "making room" for the week's auctions canonce again trade unencumbered by such concerns.  It's never usually a major motivation for new gains, but it helps bring about shifts from negative to positive trends frequently enough that we always entertain it as a possibility. 

With that "negative trend" in mind, it's worth noting that we're still holding under recent yield highs, and also under a relevant technical ceiling at 2.38.  I don't bring this up to suggest that those ceilings will continue to hold--merely so we know where the lines in the sand are if yields happen to cross them.  In other words, moving over those ceilings would be bad.  Holding them would be good.  Making it down to 2.34 or 2.30 would be great.

Apart from the 30yr bond auction at 1pm, the only significant scheduled data is Jobless Claims at 8:30am.  It hasn't been much of a market mover of late, and that should continue to be the case in all but the most extreme cases.  There are several Fed speakers about.  In fact, there  are at least 4 speeches before the auction.  Two of those will happen before you read this and only one of the remaining two matter: Yellen at 12:45pm.

If none of this produces any decisive bounce or break, attention turns to Retail Sales tomorrow morning.