Yesterday was fairly uneventful as global markets generally cooled off after 2 big days of Brexit-related volatility at the beginning of the week.  For those of us following rates with a focus on the mortgage market, the most notable outcome was the highly visible outperformance in MBS.  It wasn't visible because it was huge, but rather because MBS simply held perfectly flat as Treasury yields rose throughout the day.

Today brings the week's most important slate of economic data.  Realistically, it's the only day with any meaningful reports.  Festivities start at 8:30am with Durable Goods--definitely a potential market mover these days given the ongoing focus on trade.  After that, it's on to the Markit PMIs at 9:45am ET.  

A PMI is a Purchasing Managers Index.  That's a phrase that's never really meant a lot to me personally.  I think it's pretty worthless in describing what it's actually trying to measure.  Here's a shortcut: think of it like a much more timely GDP.  The fact that PMIs are traditionally broken out by manufacturing and non-manufacturing only adds to their appeal as markets assess trade war impacts and their propensity to spill over from the manufacturing to the services sector.

In the US, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has been the big dog as far as PMIs go.  That's still the case, and there's no reason not to expect a big reaction if the ISM PMIs fall far from forecasts.  But you have to wait until next Friday to get the first of the two for October.  Another data provider, Markit, is going to give you the PMIs today!  

Markit is the standby in Europe, and has been increasingly moving markets in the US.  In fact, even the European PMIs from Markit have an impact.  The French, German, and EU versions were out overnight and they resulted in the biggest moves and biggest volume spikes in Treasury futures.