Among the largest gainers yesterday on a steep equity sell-off were long dated Treasury Bond ETFs on what looked like a “risk-off” day based on the flurry of activity.
For just on Feb. 13 we pointed out the severe short interest pressure and “pile on” effect that seemed to be occurring in TBT (ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury Bond, Expense Ratio 0.95%) and and TLT (iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond, Expense Ratio 0.15%) had a $115 handle at that moment (traded as high as $119.35 yesterday).
The “dead cat” bounce that we saw as a possibility occurred yesterday, and in a big way. [Treasury ETF Testing 50-Day Average]
Needless to say, the above ETFs TLT and TBT will likely continue to see heavy trading activity as they did yesterday, especially as some market commentators spoke of a possible short squeeze in treasuries yesterday that kicked in during the trading session (after a rather orderly first hour or so of trading).
Secondary ETFs in this space that do not normally trade a ton of volume on a day to day basis, but will likely see accelerated activity as the price volatility in treasury bonds picks up include TMF (Direxion Daily 20 Year Plus Treasury Bull 3X, Expense Ratio 0.95%), LBND (PowerShares DB 3X Long 25+ Year Treasury Bond, Expense Ratio 0.95%), UBT (ProShares Ultra 20+ Year Treasury, Expense Ratio 0.95%), and DLBL (iPath U.S. Treasury Long Bond Bull ETN, Expense Ratio 0.75%).