It's hard to say whether yesterday's heavy selling in the bond market was acting alone or whether it was in response to the heavy buying seen on Tuesday. Today's gains suggest the latter, with the common thread being that the market is paying attention to political developments. On Tuesday, it would have been the impeachment talk that helped bonds rally. Yesterday, it would have been the release of the Ukraine call transcript (which the market viewed as falling short of acting as damning evidence). And now today, the impetus for the rally could be the congressional hearing on all of the above, which leaves the urgency of the political situation in a more ambiguous state.
If I had to vote right now on how much all of the above matters, I'd say "not as much as it seems." It makes for great TV and great headlines, but we clearly had big market reactions surrounding several trade-related headlines and economic reports over the same 3 days. We're also not blazing any new trails with respect to September's range. In fact we're smack dab in the middle of the range created by the big week of selling at the beginning of the month, and likely waiting on economic data or major geopolitical updates to merely create more volatility inside the same old range. It will take a concerted effort to prompt the next range breakout.
None of today's data was up to the task. Q2 GDP is just that: 3-6 months old at this point! Traders were already buying bonds in the 10 minutes leading up to the data and they continued buying bonds as stocks began to sell at 8:40am ET. Tomorrow's data has a better chance to move the needle as Durable Goods and PCE inflation are probably the two biggest reports of the week.