As you can see, we definitely had some bond-market-specific weakness this morning. Unfortunately for the sake of accurate analysis, the weakness occurred in close proximity to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. This logically resulted in media outlets pinning the weakness on CPI, but the two were completely unrelated.

The factual culprit for this morning’s weakness was a big corporate bond offering from Verizon. They did the same thing last fall and bond markets took a big, mysterious hit then too (though the past example was a much bigger deal than today’s).