The holiday-shortened bond trading week began poorly with vaccine news causing a massive yield spike.  Tuesday didn't do too much to allay fears, but it did introduce the possibility of a supportive ceiling in Treasury yields.  Thursday's trading reinforced that ceiling and today we'll see whether bonds can build on that victory  or if they're merely playing strong defense at those higher yield levels. The biggest risk on the horizon is a vaccine trial announcement expected from Moderna any day now.  In that regard, bonds are hoping for "no whammies" today, but are likely to remain cautious until the vaccine news hits.  

If Moderna's announcement corroborates the recent Pfizer announcement, bonds could keep adding to the more sharply negative momentum that began in October.  That's referred to below as the "October approach."  But even if the reaction to Moderna is ho-hum, we still have the "big bounce approach" to contend with.  One of these two uptrends must be defeated sooner or later. 

The time frame for that defeat will depend on a diverse list of factors including:

• vaccine hopes
• the senate race in Georgia (2x democratic victories would likely push rates higher)
• covid case counts heading into the winter months 
• the extent to which local governments enact new lockdowns 
• the extent to which the economy is responding negatively to rising covid case counts and lockdowns (i.e. we have much more covid now than we did in March-July, so if the economy can muddle through with stronger numbers, traders will definitely begin moving away from the post-covid low rate regime that saw 10yr yields locked in the basement under 1.0%).