It's rare for the near-term outlook in financial markets to operate in the realm of super high probability.  With so much money at stake and with traders constantly trying to price current trading levels to reflect every last ounce of data that could conceivably be known (or guessed at) about the future, that's not too much of a surprise.

So it will come as no surprise when we consider the upcoming FOMC Announcement in the same light.  Is this a "so much at stake" sort of Fed Announcement?  Or is it one of those snoozers that will leave us frustrated by its lack of impact?  We can't really rule out either eventuality at the moment, though it's slightly easier, in my opinion, to make a case for there being much at stake. 

The reason for the potentially high impact is NOT that we're expecting a rate hike, but rather that we should expect the Fed to do SOMETHING to telegraph their December intention.  This isn't wishful thinking so much as the logical conclusion based on observing the recent actions of a very nervous Fed.  They're obviously as anxious as they've ever been about getting their rather confusing message out to financial markets, and they obviously think it would be bad, for some reason, to cause excess volatility.

While we can't know whether it will be relevant or not, we CAN observe that bond markets seem to be consolidating and coiling for a a bigger break.  This consolidation has seen 10yr yields grind against their middle Bollinger Band (just the common 21-day exponential moving average).  The post-Fed break should be good for a move under 2.0% or over 2.13 based on the outer Bollinger Bands.  Today's Durable Goods data is the last big-ticket economic report to cast a vote on the direction before the event itself.