You may have noticed that things have been a bit different recently for rates/bonds.  Whereas almost any given day saw a move higher/weaker so far in 2018, 6 out of the past 8 have been stable or better.  That makes the past 2 weeks the best counterattack we've seen yet.  While that's certainly a welcome development, said counterattack has been a mostly sideways affair.  It's what happens next that matters most.

While GDP is already out, I'll take a moment to reiterate my standard-issue GDP analysis.  No one cares about GDP, at least not in a market movement sense.  It's a good talking point for politicians, but there's rarely a trading response apart from instances of very big beats or misses.  Today's was right on the money.

Today's bigger to-do for traders is "month-end."  Several types of bond market participants are required to match their holdings to certain indices or to simply get their trading positions back to neutral for month-end bookkeeping purposes.  This can create a lot of trading momentum regardless of any input from economic data or other events.  That's why I've been saying that the state of our little counterattack is especially important as of tomorrow, because it will no longer be restrained by whatever positions traders are compelled to hold (or close) for the end of February.