MBS Live Recap: Summertime Monday in November

There's something special (and especially frustrating) about certain summertime Mondays.  This is true not only because you might have been doing something fun on the weekend and are loathe to return to work, but also because financial markets can exemplify those same sorts of feelings.  Things are moving slower and with less enthusiasm than we might expect on a typical day.  In many cases, those summertime Mondays almost feel like an unofficial 3rd day of the weekend.  

The other time of the year where such days begin creeping back in is during the winter holiday season.  And I'm going to declare today as the first such day.  Granted, this probably has almost everything to do with the fact that the news cycle is preoccupied with the impeachment hearings, and very little to do with the time of year, but markets aren't very interested in that news.  So to market participants, it just feels dead out there.

The absence of volume and liquidity helped grease the skids for a modest rally this morning (i.e. when fewer traders are in the room, each trader represents a higher percentage of the overall market and can thus effect reactions that are bigger than they typically would be).  There was at least one trade-related headline just before the noon hour, but it was only really traded by Twitter-reading algorithms.  Stocks and bonds quickly returned to the morning's previous trend and fizzled sideways for the rest of the day.