Thanksgiving, Spring Break, or Christmas are the likely candidates for the busiest travel times of the year, right?  While that would stand to reason, the reality is that busiest travel day of the year is usually a Friday in July.  In fact, several summertime weekends are usually bigger travel weekends than any in the aforementioned list of usual suspects. 

The theme of "out of office" veritably leaped off the chart at the end of last week.  Check out this example of bond trading grinding to a halt into last Friday afternoon:

This week's economic calendar is telling the exact same story.  That's not to say that the schedule can ever flat-out PROMISE that trading will be contained an uneventful, but let's put it this way: the calendar won't be inspiring any major, long-term decision making among market participants.  (One great reason for that would be that market participants are not immune from the summertime travel bug). 

The only caveat on such occasions (where the calendar is so empty, and participation so light) is that the remaining participants have a larger than normal impact on trading levels.  In other words, few dollars being traded by fewer warm bodies means it takes fewer dollars than normal to move markets.  There's usually a limit to how far that sort of volatility can run, and it's almost as if there are clear boundaries on the sandbox for remaining traders during week's like this.  But volatility can be higher within those boundaries.

As far as lofty, long-term decisions go, the next one will likely involve picking a winner between these two trends.  Notice that this is a debate that could continue until mid-2017.  Obviously, we're closer to breaking out of the scarier end of this consolidating range, but it could also be the reason we've seen more supportive trading for bonds in the bigger picture.