MBS Live Recap: Coronavirus Hopes Hit Bonds as Correction Continues

So far, the correction to the coronavirus bond market rally is only a few days old, but it became much more problematic today.  Yesterday was arguably the first day of the correction and at that point, we hadn't seen quite enough weakness to label it as such (merely to offer warnings about the risk of additional negative momentum).  But today's weakness was nearly as big.  Taken together with the small bounce on Monday, this week is starting to look fairly troubling for bonds.

Interestingly enough, this wasn't destined to be the case today.  In fact, by 3am ET, bonds were actually slightly better versus yesterday.  Then came news of a newly approved anti-viral cocktail purported to treat coronavirus in China.  Markets treated headlines as if a cure or successful vaccine had been newly discovered. 

In actuality, "the antidote" is just the combination of two existing antiviral medications that gained regulatory approval to be tested in human trials, but the market is REALLY desperate to justify the bounce that the underlying technicals have been clamoring for, and this fit the bill nicely.  Essentially all of the drama was out of the way by the start of domestic trading, and there wasn't much movement to speak of after that.  That pre-market volatility was covered in detail in my morning commentary.