Wow-
I wonder if the jobs miss is fueling gold up today and USD down.....

Bill-
Have you ever considered an email alert service for your blog since many of your blog entries are time-sensitive and your readership may not have time to check your blog every 15 min or so? I have an idea where a short title/description/link to BillCara.com could be sent to a beta part of your readership; perhaps based on key words in the title such as ALERT: or something to that effect. I have the technical infrastructure in place to do that on my side. It would just take a day or so to implement. Something to consider.
MW

My email is down, but to answer the question, 'why would bonds stabilize?'

Sentiment at a historic extreme to the negative. Bear case is well known. Managers have very low duration exposure. Timing services very negative.

Bonds have broken down but this move is sizable and could be looking for news to justify consolidation (or reversal given sentiment).

Buying the TLT at the open.

Again, should bonds reverse a lot of folks are on the wrong side. And that I believe could lend surprising stremgth to the year end rally in STOCKS.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B7F002CAC%2DFCD1%2D45EE%2D9D3A%2D5274CD70CF38%7D&siteid=mktw&dist=

"Consider the latest readings from the Hulbert Bond Newsletter Sentiment Index (HBNSI), which reflects the average exposure to the bond market among a subset of short-term bond timing newsletters. As of Thursday night's close, the HBNSI stood at minus 67.4%.

That means that the average of the timers included in this sentiment index is recommending that two-thirds of the amount subscribers have allocated to the fixed income market should be invested on the short side of the bond market. That's an aggressive bet that the bond market will decline, and that interest rates will rise.

Contrarians believe that the markets rarely accommodate the majority, so this extreme bearishness is bullish.

There has been only one other time when the HBNSI dropped to as low a level as where it was Thursday night. That was early last April, very close to its low for the year. The 30-year Treasury bond proceeded to rally by nearly 7% between then and late June, which in the staid world of government bonds is a big deal."

I agree with stockman, bonds have fallen very far and are technically oversold. I have been underweight bonds for some time and am looking for the downtrend line on the daily charts to be broken to the upside and then I will buy bonds - but not before the downtrend is broken. I also think the stock market is anticipating a bond rally if only because of the oversold level. If bonds do rally, the $USD will probably fall because of the lower yields (especially if the EU raises rates), so I am also buying gold and gold miners on the current weakness.

Staying disciplined, I bought PFE a couple of days ago (analysis in former comment) when the daily RSI's crossed - it's working out so far...time will tell.

Buy weakness, sell strength, don't chase. Tough to do, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Good luck to all.

Thanks Bill, looks like you're starting to get some student response, let's hope it grows.