Remember last Thursday and Friday?  Those were pretty good!  It sure looked like bonds had had enough weakness for a while and might start to consolidate.  Yes yes... I know that I said that the "Token Post-NFP Rally Doesn't Make Us Safe," but I'm guessing that assessment seemed overly cautious to many of you after the first 2 days of gains in more than 2 weeks. 

Then, of course, Monday tanked, and rates set new highs for the year 3 days in a row.  And now here we are again...  another Thu/Fri duo has teamed up to deliver the exact same amount of gains on average and darn close to the exact same levels.  We know the next step in this dance, right?  Believe in the bounce only to get smacked down on Monday!

But I'm not as pessimistic today as I was last Friday.  True, Monday was rough, and Tuesday Wednesday were rougher, but both of those days contributed to a sense of ground-holding rather than uncontrollable selling.  This week we didn't have anything remotely like the capitulative spike that began last Thursday's buying opportunity.  This rally was more of a conscious decision as opposed to an involuntary, corrective, knee-jerk reaction.

While it's definitely not impossible that things start out weaker next week, at this point, it's fairly likely that sort of weakness would simply be to keep things range-bound ahead of FOMC Minutes as opposed to weakness that advances May's negative trend.