Other than the sheer lack of volume/participation, Monday's most notable feature turned out to be Chicago's ISM numbers.  The drop from 62.2 last month to 56.2 is a sizable chunk and you'll see it in the chart below, yet markets didn't really respond, at least not yet.  There are two interesting considerations here.  On the one hand, Chicago PMI is historically fairly well correlated with the National numbers due out today at 10am.  Here's a chart of both of them, updated to include yesterday's Chicago PMI, naturally suggesting that the 53.0 forecast for today's report isn't quite enough of a step down from the previous 53.4 reading.

But now that you've seen the chart, you'll likely agree that the national number is the steadier of the two, and that historically, we've seen similar amounts of chopiness in Chicago numbers NOT ultimately result in the same magnitude movement for the national numbers.  Despite that caveat, we don't think it's the biggest consideration keeping things even-keeled yesterday.

For that, we'd turn to the employment component of the report.  It was the only notable saving grace, rising from the previous month of 56.3 to 58.7.  If it hearkens an improving employment component in today's report then we'd have the first two reads on employment showing improvements.  Then say ADP were to confirm the trend and suddenly markets might find themselves on the wrong side of this Friday's NFP bet.  

But alas, our cart is now very far ahead of our horse.  The point is that there were shades of gray in today's data that were more noticeable due to the dominant theme of this week being "NFP FRIDAY."  The other dominant theme, of course, and another good reason to 'slow our roll' is the relative lack of participation with most of Europe out for May Day. 

Honorable Mentions:

- Construction Spending at 10am

- Fed Twist Buying in 8-10yr Maturities, concluding at 11am

- TONS of Fed Speakers: Kocherlakota (930), Williams (1100), Lacker (1130), Evans (1230), Lockhart (1230), Plosser (1500)