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Snowball Rally, But Does it Change Anything?

After more than 2 weeks of relentless selling that took yields to their highest levels since 2007, bonds have increasingly been sitting on dry powder–at least from a technical standpoint.  Today’s PMI data provided the spark.  The explosion of bond buying began in Europe where PMIs were much weaker across the board in the services sector.  US numbers weren’t as bad by comparison, but far enough below consensus to greenlight the rally.  Interestingly, and perhaps importantly, the rally didn’t let up ahead of the 20yr Treasury auction, but the auction was decent nonetheless.  This increases the temptation to conclude “the top is in” for rates, but that top is only as good as the forthcoming data is bad.  We also need to see if Powell has anything interesting to say on Friday (or at least if enough of the market was waiting on Jackson Hole before making even bigger moves).