I realize that by including Greece in a headline that I'm not really helping the issue that I'm about to complain about (again), but perhaps the headline is informative enough to serve the purpose of 'pushing back' against the notion that Greece is a predominant market mover.  Let's be clear: Greece is certainly the talk of the town, and there are even quite a few market participants that view it as a legitimate source of trading motivation.  They're not the problem.  They're giving it its due in terms of trading volume.

The problem is the mass of bloggers, reporters, strategists and the like who do more pontificating than actual trading (the nerve of some people!).  Many of them are my friends, respected colleagues, and even mentors.  They're all dead wrong and sorely in need of pontification from bloggers, reporters, and strategists like me in posts like this.

You can't simply claim Greece is a trading motivation because you see some newswires that fit logically with the direction of bond trading.  Half the time these observations come up, Greece-related trading metrics are doing the opposite of what you're saying they should be and the other half the time, you're looking at Greece-related metrics while ignoring core European and US bond markets. 

To be fair, there are indeed moments where Greek yields are moving in the opposite direction from German/US yields, and those are the moments that make sense in the context of "Greece is everything."  But the fact that they're only "moments" in a much larger time, is important.

In fact, the big picture is exceedingly important.  It's a factor in the pace of 2015's selling pressure, and--in my opinion--fully accounts for all of the ostensibly paradoxical relentlessness (who even puts 3 words like that together?  sorry...)

The point is that there is cause for concern when you look at the super-big picture--especially when you consider that the approach to ZERO percent in European bond benchmarks may indeed have been a unique opportunity in history to bet on rising global rates. 

The fact that rates aren't rising faster is a testament to reason and emotion.  Emotionally, it doesn't FEEL like rates should bounce higher as abruptly as they have in 2015.  Rationally, arguments can be made that the stagnant growth and low-inflation environments don't justify higher rates.  But then there's the other side of reason that reminds us that rates may have been artificially repressed by QE and generally accommodative monetary policy, and that a 1% Fed Funds Rate is still incredibly accommodative in the big picture even though it would a gut-wrenching departure from the current 0-.25% rate.

The fact that rates aren't rising faster than they are over the past few years is a testament to the staying power of this bounce.  True, the lagging European crisis and crisis response is the overt reason that US rates have had a tamer-than-historical bounce since 2012, but regardless of the reason, the simple fact that the slope is gentler is what's scary.  The gentler the slope of the correction, the more long term staying power it has.  Scarier still, rates could literally plummet for days and we'd still be in that uptrend.

What changes this?  Certainly nothing on today's calendar, and certainly nothing in Greece.  And that's my point.  Many of the traders responsible for the biggest moves are keeping an eye on these sorts of big picture considerations first and foremost.  Greece, economic data, etc are mere ripples on the edge of a much larger wave.