Odaily reports: Ahead of Friday's release of the U.S. October nonfarm payrolls report, bond traders have already bet that the U.S. Treasury market will rise further, while market expectations for the Federal Reserve to continue raising rates have continued to cool. After the U.S. midterm elections, global stock markets suffered a sell-off, driving investors toward U.S. Treasuries this week as a safe haven, and the 10-year Treasury yield fell on Thursday to its lowest level since early September.
As the stock market sell-off intensified further, the 10-year Treasury yield stood at 4.82% on Friday. The recent rally in the bond market has strengthened traders' confidence that yields will fall further. One options market trade bets that the 10-year Treasury yield could fall to 4.7% by the end of next week; another trade expiring on November 20 bets that the yield will fall to about 4.35%.
Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities, said the data due Friday is expected to be slightly weak, but the market is still mainly focused on economic fundamentals. He noted that the U.S. economy remains quite strong and the labor market is showing a "low hiring, low layoffs" pattern, so the market has already sharply reduced rate hike expectations over the past few weeks.
