(Updates market activity, details on NY stay-at-home order)
By Ross Kerber
BOSTON, March 20 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury yields fell on
Friday after New York's governor ordered residents to stay at
home in the latest emergency measure aimed at controlling the
coronavirus pandemic.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year note was down
20 basis points at 0.9287%, ending a period of steady trading on
Friday morning and resuming the volatile patterns seen earlier
this week.
The movement left a closely watched part of the U.S. yield
curve, the gap between the 2-year and 10-year notes,
at 58 basis points, 5 basis points lower than its
close on Thursday but still at a level not seen since 2018.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a news conference he
would issue an executive order to mandate that 100% of the
non-essential workforce stay home and all non-essential
businesses close. California also ordered nearly 40 million
people to stay home.
In addition, the New York Fed said it would offer $1
trillion for daily repurchase agreement operations for the rest
of the month.
Speaking before Cuomo's announcement, Andrew Richman,
managing director of fixed income at Truist/SunTrust Advisory
Services, said traders were starting to make sense of a host of
actions by the Fed and Treasury officials to steady the markets,
including a new swap facility and backstops for money market
funds.
"I'm hopeful that's the case," he said.
Still, Richman said trading activity was no cause for
short-term optimism. The yield on the short-term 3-month
Treasury bill remained close to zero and he and
others said that while the 10-year yield was higher than last
week, it was still at a relatively low level.
Together, the numbers are "telling us that we'll have
negative growth and the Fed will be at virtually zero for a long
time," Richman said.
The New York Fed on Friday accepted a total of $53 billion
in bids in repurchase agreement operations.
Economists polled by Reuters said the global economy was
already in a recession as the hit to economic activity from the
pandemic has spread even after central banks took steps to
support economies and markets.
March 20 Friday 1:20PM New York / 1720 GMT
Price Current Net
Yield % Change
(bps)
Three-month bills 0.04 0.0407 -0.022
Six-month bills 0.05 0.0507 0.005
Two-year note 101-154/256 0.2954 -0.126
Three-year note 100-102/256 0.3654 -0.164
Five-year note 103-2/256 0.5074 -0.147
Seven-year note 102-36/256 0.8071 -0.184
10-year note 105-100/256 0.9287 -0.200
30-year bond 111-144/256 1.5175 -0.234
DOLLAR SWAP SPREADS
Last (bps) Net
Change
(bps)
U.S. 2-year dollar swap 20.00 2.50
spread
U.S. 3-year dollar swap 13.00 4.50
spread
U.S. 5-year dollar swap 7.25 1.25
spread
U.S. 10-year dollar swap -13.25 2.25
spread
U.S. 30-year dollar swap -70.00 6.50
spread
(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by David Gregorio and Dan
Grebler)
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