With Treasury bond yields pushed down by technical positioning and speculation on increased accommodative monetary policies overseas, U.S. Treasury bond exchange traded funds continue their forward march and face a new resistance level.
The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NYSEArca: TLT) has gained 2.2% over the past week. TLT has increased 12.0% year-to-date.
Tradoung around $113.7, TLT currently faces a resistance level and could hover around the $111 to $115 range for a while, writes Jeff Pierce for Investing. However, the ETF could find further upside momentum and potentially break up to $125, forming a massive double top, if Treasuries find further safe-haven demand.
Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields dipped to 2.488% Thursday, a new seven-month low. Yields on 30-year notes also fell to 3.34%.
In anticipation of rising rates and falling bond prices, many investors accumulated short positions this year. For instance, the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (NYSEArca: TBT), which seeks to deliver twice the daily inverse performance of the Barclays Capital US Treasury 20+ Year Treasury Bond Index, is off almost 23% year-to-date but has attracted $525.3 million in inflows this year. [Inverse Bond ETFs: 2014’s Definition of Insanity]
However, with rates falling 50 basis points this year, traders have closed out their short positions and then bought into the market, pushing yields even lower in the latest round of short-covering, reports Ben Eisen for MarketWatch. [Treasury ETFs Strengthen on Growth Uncertainty, Short-Covering]
“This is the pain trade,” Andrew Brenner, the head of international fixed income at National Alliance Capital Markets, said in a Bloomberg article. “This has everything to do with bad positions. The amount of liquidity in the market has been reduced dramatically, and all the people going in the same direction have exaggerated the moves.”