Treasury auctions showing muted bid-to-cover ratios may precede futures price drops. Keen watchers of how to trade bond futures use this as an early sentiment measure. In her questions to Grassley, about 1,000 words, Basu mentions Trump 14 times by name and several more times as “president.” Basis trades involve buying a bond in the cash market and selling a futures contract tied to that same bond. The setup creates a spread (the basis) that traders expect to shrink over time. If the gap narrows as planned, they can unwind both sides of the trade and pocket the difference. Fed reverse repo facility balances dropped by $87B, implying liquidity shifts. Advanced traders knowing how to trade bond futures often track such flows for positioning ahead of rate moves.