Although today brought the week's most anticipated line-up of economic data as well as overnight headlines on US/China trade agreements, the biggest market mover was yesterday's Fed Minutes.  At the time, I expressed confusion as to why financial markets weren't doing more to react to the Fed's most surprising update where it basically said January was a market-friendly month for Fed policy in order to address backlash over an unfriendly December.  This is a gross oversimplification of a fairly tactfully worded confession, but it was a confession nonetheless.

Don't get me wrong.  There were plenty of other reasons for the Fed to be more market-friendly in January, but the fact remains that they took a moment to acknowledge the market's concern and to say they felt they'd addressed it since then.  The conclusion is that the Fed was more friendly/dovish than it needed to be in January's meeting.  January's meeting was worth some solid improvement for both stocks and bonds, so this revelation was worth a token move in the other direction.

Why wouldn't we have seen this reaction yesterday?  Keep in mind that there's only one hour left in the official bond market trading day by the time a Fed Minutes release comes out.  Moreover, due to weather, reporters weren't able to get early access to the Fed Minutes yesterday.  That meant market participants had to read and digest every word of the announcement without the benefit of having an hour's worth of dirty work already done for them.  Looking at the way today traded, I get the sense that more than a few investors were making their post-Fed trades first thing this morning as opposed to yesterday afternoon.