Supportive Start And a Closer Look at 2.91%

Summertime trading is detectably different from the rest of the year.  Volume and liquidity are a bit lighter.  Counterintuitive moves are more common.  And there's a risk of a bit more volatility than events justify.  Thursday was arguably one of those days, but Mondays and Fridays are the habitual worst offenders.  There's no way to tell when we're about to see one of the bigger, more random summertime moves, but in today's case, at least we have a convenient technical backdrop to help gauge significance.

2.85% and 2.91% have been the most relevant overhead technical levels for 10yr yields over the past 24 hours.

2.85% has already been challenged due to an upbeat Consumer Sentiment reading, but 2.91% may be the more relevant level anyway. It definitely saw more action as a floor in July and it's closer to the intersection of the current, short-term consolidation pattern.  

As always, there's no predictive value to be gleaned from technical breaks, but they can confirm general trends.  When it comes to 2.91, a sustained break above would confirm that bonds are increasingly giving up the recent flight of low-rate fancy driven by weaker econ data in late July (see "too cold" below) and are more interested in getting back into the same sideways, volatile range that was taking shape as early as 4 months ago.  Incidentally, 2.91 was fairly central to that range as well.