After moving to the upside early in the session, treasuries pulled back near the unchanged line over the course of the trading day on Wednesday.
Bond prices pulled back well off their early highs before ending the day nearly unchanged. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, inched up by less than a basis point to 0.781 percent after hitting a low of 0.746 percent.
The initial strength among treasuries reflected their appeal as a safe haven amid concerns about a recent spike in coronavirus cases.
The U.S. averages more than 70,000 new coronavirus cases a day over a week, with 29 states setting new records this month for the most new daily cases since the pandemic began in February.
More than 8.78 million cases have been reported nationwide and at least 226,000 people have died of COVID-19, according to data from John Hopkins University.
According to JHU, the average number of daily new cases this past week is up 21 percent compared to the previous week.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has continued to downplay the pandemic in recent days, accusing the media of focusing too much on the disease ahead of next week's elections.
"Covid, Covid, Covid is the unified chant of the Fake News Lamestream Media. They will talk about nothing else until November 4th., when the Election will be (hopefully!) over," Trump tweeted. "Then the talk will be how low the death rate is, plenty of hospital rooms, & many tests of young people."
The subsequent pullback by treasuries may have reflected profit taking following the upward trend seen over the past few sessions.
Treasuries continued to give back ground as the Treasury Department revealed that its sale of $55 billion worth of five-year notes attracted below average demand.
The five-year note auction drew a high yield of 0.330 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.38, while the ten previous five-year note auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.50.
The bid-to-cover ratio is a measure of demand that indicates the amount of bids for each dollar worth of securities being sold.
The Treasury is scheduled to announce the results of its auction of $53 billion worth of seven-year notes on Thursday.
Trading on Thursday may also be impacted by reaction to reports on initial jobless claims and pending home sales.
The material has been provided by InstaForex Company - www.instaforex.com
source http://www.mt5.com/forex_news/quickview/2166134/
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