Treasury yields largely down

US Treasury yields largely fell in volatile trading on Thursday as investors hurried to minimize risk in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, and the Fed poured liquidity into the financial system.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was at 1.1256%, down 13.2 basis points for the session.
The yield on the 3-month US Treasury bill was up 2.8 basis points to 0.0483%, though still a very low level for an instrument whose yield has not been in negative territory since October 2015.
The movements also steepened a closely watched part of the US yield curve, the gap between the 2-year and 10-year notes,
to 69 basis points, adding 6 basis points to its close on Wednesday and its widest since 2018.
Analysts said the movements showed investors piling into the safety of shorter-term securities while taking stock of efforts by President Donald Trump's administration, the Federal Reserve, and health authorities to deal with the crisis.
"Everyone is trying to digest what impact all this stimulus will have on Treasuries," said Michael Lorizio, senior fixed income trader for Manulife Investment Management.
"You're seeing rotation trades out of stocks, and on anything going into fixed income the flows seem overwhelmingly geared toward the front end of the curve," he said.
Illiquid markets continued to exacerbate the trading volatility, analysts said, with the 10-year yield moving across a 27 basis point range.
The New York Fed on Thursday morning said it accepted more than $60 billion in two repurchase agreement operations, and announced two additional operations.
The Fed also opened the taps for central banks in nine new countries to access dollars. The Fed said the swaps, in which it accepts other currencies as collateral in exchange for dollars, will allow other central banks to tap up to a combined total of $450 billion.
Tom Simons, Jefferies money market economist, said the accelerating Fed actions would be expected to drive down Treasury yields, but traders still were trying to reposition portfolios for safety.
"Obviously we're headed for a period for the next several months where the economic data is going to look absolutely ghastly and there's not going to be a lot of strong risk appetite," he said.
Major US stock exchanges were higher in afternoon trading. Meanwhile a report Thursday morning by the Labour Department showed the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits surged to a 2-1/2 year high last week as companies in the services sector laid off workers because of the impacts of the coronavirus.
Also on Thursday, the Republican-led US Senate was scrambling to hammer out details of a $1 trillion-plus package to stem the economic fallout of the pandemic, which could include direct financial assistance to Americans, lending to key industries and money for more medical equipment.