NFP Plays The Percentages. Bonds Reacting Like You'd Expect

ADP, Consumer Confidence labor differential, ISM Manufacturing. Challenger job cuts, Philly Fed, Empire State, Continuing Jobless Claims...  These are all the economic reports that suggested a higher NFP number today. In addition, April's NFP historically beats the forecast 50% of the time vs missing 46%, and those beats average 170k while misses average 103k.  Contrast that against only 3 economic reports suggesting a miss.  In other words, NFP played the percentages and bonds are arguably doing the same as the 253k vs 180k beat coupled with higher wages and lower unemployment clearly implies a sell-off.

That said, the sell-off does nothing to impact the broader trends.  Bonds remain squarely inside the same old range.  If anything, NFP merely gave yields a gentle nudge that helped maintain the range.

If the sell-off isn't quite as big, it might have something to do with the fact that CPI is looming as an arguably even more important economic report next Wednesday.  Even if we focus solely on today's jobs data, while the current number may be higher than the previous number, it wasn't high enough to change the fairly steady downtrend in job creation. In fact, the 3-month moving average of NFP just hit the lowest level in more than 2 years.