Volume may be picking up for the bond market following the typically quiet Thanksgiving trading week, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the movement in the charts. Yields are still dead flat in the context of the past few weeks. In fact, they weren't even able to trade outside last Friday's range.
It's not as if it's some great crime for bonds to be flat. It's also not as if that flatness guarantees the next move. In the current case, the absence of change is grounds for some mix of anxiety and excitement as rates are on the edge of re-entering the lower range from the summer months. Either that, or they're on the verge of bouncing back toward long term highs. It all depends on what happens next.
As for today's specific motivations, it's hard to delve too deeply into such things considering the narrowness of the range. That said, we could (and probably should) note that there's at least some attention being paid to the sharp losses in oil prices. Several of today's ups and down in bond markets seemed to take cues from oil, even when that meant turning a blind eye to cues from stocks.
By 5pm ET, 10yr yields were exactly where they were at 5pm yesterday. Fannie 4.0 MBS outperformed, rising 3/32nds (0.09) to close at 100-10 (100.31).