💡See also: Mortgage Tidbits (below). With the U.S. government entering day two of its shutdown, there's no end in sight. Markets are forced to divine macro trends the way gamblers pick horses: with plenty of faith and not much data. All federal data releases—including weekly jobless

💡See also: Mortgage Tidbits (below). With Washington “closed until further notice,” bond markets are left scavenging for clues in private-sector data. First out of the gate was Wednesday's ADP payroll report. And let’s just say, if this were a movie, critics would be walking out at intermission.

💡Holiday note: The new amortization simulator and results will be published on Wednesday afternoon, given Tuesday's holiday. The U.S. government has shut down, but markets saw it coming. So far, the fallout is minimal, with U.S. bond futures little changed at 5:30 am ET Wednesday.

💡See also: Mortgage Tidbits (below). Yields escalated modestly by last week’s finish as the U.S. once again played the overachiever. Data showed its economy holding up better than expected, which partly explains why North American credit spreads (the extra compensation investors demand for holding non-government bonds) fell to