Treasuries Close Nearly Flat After Recovering From Initial Weakness

(RTTNews) - After moving to the downside early in the session, treasuries regained ground over the course of the trading day on Monday.

Bond prices climbed well off their initial lows before ending the day nearly unchanged. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, inched up by less than a basis point to 0.640 percent after reaching a high of 0.663 percent.

Treasuries initially came under pressure in reaction to more upbeat news regarding a potential coronavirus vaccine.

Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) announced that two of the companies' four investigational vaccine candidates received Fast Track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The companies said they expect to start the next phase of trials as soon as later this month and are anticipating enrolling up to 30,000 subjects.

If the ongoing studies are successful and the vaccine receives regulatory approval, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to manufacture up to 100 million doses by the end of 2020 and potentially more than 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

Selling pressure waned over the course of the morning, however, as traders looked ahead to key economic and earnings news later this week.

The upbeat news on the vaccine front also came as the U.S. has reported more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases for three days in a row, with Florida seeing a record 15,299 new cases on Sunday.

Looking ahead, trading on Tuesday may be impacted by reaction to a report on consumer price inflation in the month of June.