As you may have noticed, there are three MBS Commentary articles every day, regardless of how much ground we need to cover in terms of news, events, and market movement.  Today would be one of those days where that ground is not only almost non-existent, but has already been covered in the mid-day.  Moreover, it's also in line with the general theme laid out at the beginning of the week, when we discussed summertime trading apathy.

To reiterate a point from this week's opener, if your job deals with interest rates and you had to pick a few days to tack on to the weekend in order to facilitate summertime vacationing, this week would be hard to beat.  There was very little on the economic calendar to begin with, and what was on the calendar didn't matter much.  Add to that the fact that there could be no Fed speeches*, and that markets would be preoccupied with equities due to earnings season and all the ingredients were there.

For the sake of having some semblance of a recap of today's events/markets, here you go.  Bonds held steady, despite economic data (weak New Home Sales) and fairly hefty stock losses (S&P down more than 20 points).  The end.

*From the Fed's external communications policy: "To facilitate the effectiveness of the Committee’s policy deliberations and the clarity of its communications, staff will observe the blackout period on monetary policy communications in conjunction with each regularly scheduled Committee meeting.  The blackout period will begin at midnight Eastern Time seven days before the beginning of the meeting.  During each blackout period, staff will refrain from expressing their views or providing analysis to members of the public about macroeconomic or financial developments or about current or prospective monetary policy issues unless that information has already been cleared for publication and made widely available to the public prior to the blackout period."