Shortly after domestic markets closed on Monday, Greece's PM Lucas Papademos told reporters that hoped to conclude debt negotiations by the end of the week.  In case that time frame makes you wonder whether or not these are the same debt negotiations that officials "hoped would be resolved by the end of the weekend," they are indeed!  Markets appear all Greeced-out, however, as the news failed to motivate much, if any price action swings and/or volume.  Timing likely plays a part in this, but much more important is the burgeoning sense that markets could seem to care less about more of the same songs and dances.  It's almost as if "Troika" is the hypnotist's trigger word to make all of us fall into an apathetic slumber.

(Reuters) "Significant progress has been made in talks about private sector involvement," Papademos told reporters early on Tuesday following a meeting with senior officials from the European Central Bank and the EU after an EU leaders' summit.  "We are seeking to conclude negotiations with the troika by the end of the week," he said, referring to the team of analysts from the ECB, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund who are responsible for monitoring Greece's progress in meeting budget deficit targets.  Papademos said the major sticking points to be agreed with the troika were on deeper spending cuts and labour market reforms.

If domestic economic data stands a better chance than Greece-related newswires to stir the hearts and minds of market participants, you wouldn't have known it from Monday's flat and flavorless session (incidentally, we'll accept flat/flavorless sessions that contain MBS calmly trading at all-time highs).  But Tuesday has a more robust schedule, including Q4 Employement costs, Case Shiller Home Prices, Chicago PMI (Purchasing Manager's Index) and January Consumer Confidence.  The other consideration with respect to economic data that fails to inspire much of a market reaction is that markets could naturally be waiting to react to Friday's jobs data.

Until then, we may merely see more ebbs and flows inside a range with Monday effectively constituting a resistance bounce (floor) for 10yr yield.  10's are up slightly this morning at 1.858 and MBS are getting the day started 2/32nds weaker at 103-21. S&P futures up about 6 points.

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Wednesday brings another relatively robust set of economic reports in the morning, but those reports will have to speak fairly loudly in order to be heard over the ear-shattering apathy that's led to default bullish bias for Treasuries.  Sure, Tuesday's Consumer Confidence numbers probably helped the rally lower, but consider that the Fed Coupon pass was going on at the same time, and was largely a bond-bullish event.  It also generated a similar amount of volume for Treasuries as that which can likely be attributed to Consumer Confidence reaction. 

Today's data is especially interesting, not because it's necessarily destined to cause massive market movements, but because it will help settle a bit of a pre-NFP bet.  The bet?  On one side, those who are rooting for a horizontal range generally being dominant for the past 3 months as opposed to the other side, who see things more as a gently sloped bullish trend.  They're both right here in this convenient chart!

Take this chart back further, and the horizontal trends get a lot more pivot-point bounces. But there have certainly been plenty of instances of technical resistance and support around the diagonal trend channel boundaries more recently, and of course MOST recently as potential resistance to further gains.  But is that a market making a calculated move down to the resistance at the red line, or simply some "overrun" past the teal line ahead of significant data?

And now we come full circle to answer the question of why Wednesday will help settle this bet.  Reason: Since NFP will ultimately (probably) have the most to say about which of these two trends is more likely in control, Wednesday's ADP Payrolls are highly informative.  Ok ok ok....  YES!  We're well aware just how angry everyone is about markets trading the ADP figures as if they mean something about where NFP will come in...  Yes... We too, don't much care for ADP as some sort of clairvoyant prediction of NFP.  But the fact remains: over time, the private payroll component shares a higher degree of correlation with ADP payrolls than anything else.  So even though you don't have to LIKE it, you should still be aware that markets will continue to TRADE it with some measure of respect paid to its predictive value, even if that's not much better than a 50/50 shot.

Other data includes weekly mortgage apps, which was out an hour ago and is updated in the table below (weaker).  Construction Spending at 10:00 AM and ISM Manufacturing at the same time.

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