Slightly Weaker Over The Weekend; Auctions and CPI in Focus

Bonds gave back a bit less than half of Friday's gains in the overnight session with most of the losses seen after the start of European trading.  That said, there wasn't any clear connection between data/events and the selling.  It began right after the EU open and accelerated into 6am ET, pulling Treasuries along for the ride.  Two Fed speakers were out over the weekend commenting on the prospects for additional rate hikes.  We have to wonder how much the market cares about such things given the fact that longer term yields are underperforming (opposite would be true if rate expectations were changing much).

Oil prices were among the scapegoats conjured up by reporters in search of concrete correlations.  Since fuel prices are one of the best places that a majority of the population can witness price changes, the connection between oil and inflation/rates resonates with many market watchers.  But when those claims are thrown around, it always makes sense to check the actual market movement.  While there's no doubt that oil broadly impacts global price pressures, it often fails to justify the intraday movement it's often credited with.  Today is just such a day with oil generally FALLING at the same time it was being credited as an underlying cause of higher yields.

All of the trading seen so far today can't help but be relegated to the "noise" category as there are much bigger fish to fry in the coming days.  The opening act will be the newly larger Treasury auctions starting tomorrow afternoon.  We'll make it through 2 of the 3 before getting the week's obvious headliner: CPI data on Thursday morning.