Investors flee from U.S. Treasury bonds

I, personally, am getting pretty tired of all the winning:

An aggressive selloff in longer-term U.S. Treasurys picked up momentum during Asia trading hours, a worrying sign that almost no asset is safe as President Trump’s sweeping new tariffs go into effect.

In recent trading, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was 4.470%, according to Tradeweb. That was up from around 4.26% in afternoon U.S. trading Tuesday and less than 4% at the end of last week. The yield on the 30-year bond was nearly 5%.

Yields, which fall when bond prices rise, initially plunged after Trump announced his new tariffs on April 2, reflecting a flight to safer assets as investors sold riskier assets like stocks.

Longer-term yields, however, reversed course on Monday and took another leg up Tuesday after a $58 billion auction of 3-year notes met with tepid demand from investors.

“Given this big shock, with the tariffs and everything, people are just nervous,” said Thanos Bardas, global co-head of investment-grade fixed income at Neuberger Berman.

For bond investors, the sharp rise in yields is uncomfortably similar to a brief selloff that occurred at the depth of the Covid meltdown, when traders sold whatever they could to raise cash.

In this case, analysts and investors say there is broad nervousness about holding longer-term Treasurys ahead of government auctions of 10-year notes on Wednesday and 30-year bonds on Thursday.

One concern of U.S. investors is that overseas private investors or foreign central banks could sell Treasurys in reaction to Trump’s tariffs.

Investors are also worried that tariffs will drive up consumer prices even as they slow U.S. growth.

This is arguably the most important of many very clear sign that we’re on the verge of economic meltdown.

People need to understand. The 10 year treasury note is the backbone of the entire economy. Mortgage rates, consumer debt etc are based on its rate. It's considered the "risk free" rate. What happens when the basis of the financial markets is no longer risk free is a total financial market collapse.

[image or embed]— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) April 8, 2025 at 9:45 PM

And unlike 2020 or 2008, this was not the result of an exogenous shock or a complex series of policy blunders (by both sides of the aisle) and abusive practices. It is the simple result of an unfathomably ignorant moron has a cult-like dominance over a political party, allowing him to impose insane policies based on delegations Congress could take away from him tomorrow. And a shout goes out to every member of the political press who knew perfectly well that Trump was dangerously unfit but chose to portray the 2024 election as a low-stakes event in which the biggest issues were the age of someone who wasn’t a candidate and the Democratic candidate’s alleged lack of command of policy details.