The fun thing about FOMC Minutes releases is that we can never be sure if they're going to cause drama for rates until we see how markets react.  Whether or not that happens, rates have been trading a classic low-volume consolidation pattern leading up to the day itself.  Every bit of trading for the past 4 sessions has taken place within the range established on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

Today's trading never really came close to testing the boundaries of that range.  That's a good thing considering rates were heading higher during the the two instances of more active trading.  The first followed this morning's Housing Starts data.  Although Building Permits were weaker than expected, investors were able to overlook the implications due to the typically large month-to-month changes in multi-family permitting.  Single-Fam permits were decent enough and Housing Starts themselves, rose to the best levels since late 2007.

The second bout of selling arrived in the afternoon and can only be chalked up to positional considerations ahead of tomorrow's FOMC.  That means that the traders who had bet on rates falling at some point within the past month (or even the previous few hours) were booking their profits and getting back to more neutral positions ahead of the potentially big day.