There continues to be little to observe or conclude in this 'holiday-light' trading environment.  While today's data will provide at least something to observe, conclusions will remain elusive.  That's OK though.  That's the nature of the game this time of year. 

Bond markets might as well be closed, but because they are technically open, there remains some small risk of a big enough break that we might care.  The frustrating thing about considering such breaks is that--because of the holiday trading environment--we couldn't conclude that the break was meaningful.

For those of you who like to have at least one small risk to obsess over, consider this: the last time bond yields bounced near the top of the recent range, they followed through with a break across the mid-point to the lower half of the range.  This time, however, they're still hanging out in the middle of the range. 

In other words, the candlesticks in the following chart are just sitting on top of the middle Bollinger Band (the yellow line, also a 21-day moving average), unlike Dec 18th when the broke lower).  This could be construed as an early indication of underlying weakness, but that's a stretch given the amount of information currently available combined with the nature of the season.