With Monday’s economic calendar offering all the excitement of an unplugged slot machine—and U.S. CPI incoming—yields chose not to commit one way or another.

After Friday's letdown on employment, the 5-year yield's 2 bps dip felt like a shrug.

Looking ahead to this week, Canadian economic data is sparse. That means the next five days should see our rates marching to the beat of whatever tune the U.S. and global markets decide to play.

Interviews sans fluff. That's the mantra around here, and MLN’s debut of Stress Test This aims to deliver just that. It’s a tight 9-minute format designed to load up on insight before attention spans start checking the clock.

Episode #1 spotlights the entrepreneur who took modern retail, fused it with mortgage brokering and then scaled it to a $4+ billion business. He then trailblazed the broker-owned lender concept, became a digital marketing authority (seemingly overnight), and built what many would call Canada’s most formidable independent broker brand.

This describes none other than True North Mortgage Founder Dan Eisner—a man who treats mortgage business strategy like some people treat chess: three moves ahead, and never by accident.

Once again, Canada's wheel of employment treated Bay Street estimates like satire. And this time, the Labour Force Survey surprise was on the downside.

Here was the damage:

• Estimated job change: -40,800 (est. +13,500 | prior 83,100)
• Unemployment rate: 6.9% (est. 7.0% | prior 6.9%)
• Average hourly wages: +3.3% (prior 3.2%)
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Bay Street buzz:

Bond yields hit the snooze button on Thursday, but the action should heat up at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday. That’s when the curtain rises on Canada’s monthly labour theatre.

Traders are bracing for gloom in the data: weaker hiring, higher jobless rates. We'll see if StatCan throws Bay Street another curveball.

While we wait for the employment drama, here’s the direction in which yields moved on Thursday, and a whole stack of other updates.

This is a question that virtually every mortgage lender wants to know, but none of them really do.

The reason that no lender truly knows is threefold:

1. There are few public sources of these data
2. The stats that exist conflict, and
3. Private lender data isn't widely shared.

The two most prominent sources of mortgage broker market share are Mortgage Professionals Canada (MPC) and CMHC. Here's what each side claims, and why they still leave us one bulb short of clarity.

With an economic calendar devoid of action, our five-year yield rose by a single lonely basis point, mostly out of boredom. But that alone is notable for one simple reason. Friday's flaming dumpster of a U.S. jobs report is getting no follow-through to the downside. Yields are holding up okay—so far.

Apart from a few minor Canadian trade headlines, Tuesday was pretty much an All-American show on the macro stage. The latest economic setlist now features an awkward medley of slowing growth and sticky inflation—sounds like a stagflation remix.

Here’s a full breakdown on that, and a look at how the latest news moved yields: