Last week ended with bond markets looking like they were at risk of bigger, longer-term bounce back toward higher rates.  The catalyst was/is the "risk-on" trade, which refers to investors moving money out of the relative safety of bonds and back into riskier assets like oil and stocks.  But the bounce that looked like it was underway in risk markets quickly faded as the new week began, thus helping bonds abort the launch procedure that looked like it was well underway by Friday.

Now that oil, stocks, and bonds have--at the very least--paused for reflection before continuing with the apparent plans to bounce, we wait for the next major clue.  The best bet is tomorrow's Fed announcement.  It's not that the Fed is likely to hike rates at this meeting, but markets will be keen to see how the statement evolves given the precipitous drop in risk assets in January.  Oil prices are important in that conversation because of their implicit impact on inflation. 

Today then, is more of a prelude to tomorrow's more relevant event calendar.  The data isn't robust, with the only upper tier report being Consumer Confidence at 10am.  Case Shiller Home Prices are out at 9am with the consensus seeing a 0.8 increase month-over-month and a 5.7 percent increase year-over-year.