Wednesday brings another relatively robust set of economic reports in the morning, but those reports will have to speak fairly loudly in order to be heard over the ear-shattering apathy that's led to default bullish bias for Treasuries.  Sure, Tuesday's Consumer Confidence numbers probably helped the rally lower, but consider that the Fed Coupon pass was going on at the same time, and was largely a bond-bullish event.  It also generated a similar amount of volume for Treasuries as that which can likely be attributed to Consumer Confidence reaction. 

Today's data is especially interesting, not because it's necessarily destined to cause massive market movements, but because it will help settle a bit of a pre-NFP bet.  The bet?  On one side, those who are rooting for a horizontal range generally being dominant for the past 3 months as opposed to the other side, who see things more as a gently sloped bullish trend.  They're both right here in this convenient chart!

Take this chart back further, and the horizontal trends get a lot more pivot-point bounces. But there have certainly been plenty of instances of technical resistance and support around the diagonal trend channel boundaries more recently, and of course MOST recently as potential resistance to further gains.  But is that a market making a calculated move down to the resistance at the red line, or simply some "overrun" past the teal line ahead of significant data?

And now we come full circle to answer the question of why Wednesday will help settle this bet.  Reason: Since NFP will ultimately (probably) have the most to say about which of these two trends is more likely in control, Wednesday's ADP Payrolls are highly informative.  Ok ok ok....  YES!  We're well aware just how angry everyone is about markets trading the ADP figures as if they mean something about where NFP will come in...  Yes... We too, don't much care for ADP as some sort of clairvoyant prediction of NFP.  But the fact remains: over time, the private payroll component shares a higher degree of correlation with ADP payrolls than anything else.  So even though you don't have to LIKE it, you should still be aware that markets will continue to TRADE it with some measure of respect paid to its predictive value, even if that's not much better than a 50/50 shot.

Other data includes weekly mortgage apps, which was out an hour ago and is updated in the table below (weaker).  Construction Spending at 10:00 AM and ISM Manufacturing at the same time.



Period

Unit

Actual

Forecast

Prior

Monday, January 30


 


08:30

Personal consump real mm

Dec

%

-0.1

+0.1

+0.1

08:30

Personal income mm

Dec

%

+0.5

+0.4

+0.1

08:30

Consumption, adjusted mm

Dec

%

0.0

--

+0.2

08:30

PCE price index mm

Dec

%

+0.1

--

0.0

08:30

Core PCE price index mm

Dec

%

+0.2

+0.1

+0.1

08:30

Midwest manufacturing

Dec

--

87.4

--

85.8

Tuesday, January 31


 


08:30

Employment costs

Q4

%

0.4

0.4

0.3

09:00

CaseShiller 20 mm nsa

Dec

%

-1.3

-0.9

-1.2

09:00

CaseShiller 20 yy

Dec

%

-3.7

-3.3

-3.4

09:00

CaseShiller 20 mm SA

Dec

%

-0.7

-0.5

-0.6

09:45

Chicago PMI Employment

Jan

--

54.7

--

59.2

09:45

Chicago PMI Production

Jan

--

63.8

--

64.9

09:45

Chicago PMI Prices Paid

Jan

--

62.4

--

63.8

09:45

Chicago PMI New Orders

Jan

--

63.6

--

67.1

09:45

Chicago PMI*

Jan

--

60.2

63.0

62.2

10:00

Consumer confidence

Jan

--

61.1

68.0

64.5

Wednesday, February 01


 


07:00

Mortgage market index

w/e

--

753.3

--

775.6

07:00

Mortgage market: change

w/e

%

-2.9

--

-5.0

07:00

MBA Purchase Index

w/e

--

181.7

--

184.8

07:00

Mortgage refinance index

w/e

--

4113.8

--

4265.3

07:00

Refinancing: change

w/e

%

-3.6

--

-5.2

07:00

MBA Purchase: change

w/e

%

-1.7

--

-5.4

07:00

MBA 30-yr mortgage rate

w/e

%

4.09

--

4.11

07:15

ADP National Employment

Jan

k

--

185

325

10:00

Construction spending

Dec

%

--

0.7

1.2

10:00

ISM Manufacturing PMI

Jan

--

--

54.4

53.9

10:00

ISM Mfg Prices Paid

Jan

--

--

49.0

47.5

Thursday, February 02


 


07:30

Challenger layoffs

Jan

k

--

--

41.7k

08:30

Initial Jobless Claims

w/e

k

--

370

377

08:30

Continued jobless claims

w/e

ml

--

3.56

3.554

Friday, February 03


 


08:30

Non-farm payrolls*

Jan

k

--

150

200

08:30

Manufacturing payrolls

Jan

k

--

13

23

08:30

Private Payrolls

Jan

k

--

175

212

08:30

Unemployment rate mm

Jan

%

--

8.5

8.5

08:30

Average workweek hrs

Jan

hr

--

34.4

34.4

10:00

Factory Orders

Dec

%

--

1.5

1.8

10:00

ISM N-Mfg Bus Act

Jan

--

--

56.0

56.2

10:00

ISM N-Mfg PMI

Jan

--

--

53.0

56.2