The world's biggest bond market may have finally broken out of its tight 2017 trading range, but it's not exactly drawing a clear roadmap for traders of the moves ahead.

Rather than gaining more insight into the plight of the global reflation bet, traders were left reacting to geopolitical risks from North Korea to Russia (not to mention a huge bomb dropped in Afghanistan just before holiday-shortened trading ended). They also heard President Donald Trump jawboning the dollar lower and declaring he likes low interest rates now that he's in the Oval Office. Those factors seem unlikely to disappear in the weeks ahead.

That leaves the benchmark 10-year U.S. yield at 2.24%, near the lowest this year, and the dollar about the weakest versus the yen since November, heading into a relatively quiet week for economic data. Rather than overreact to something like housing starts, traders and strategists are keying in on technical market levels to gauge the sustainability of the latest move.