What do you get when bond markets embark on a snowball rally due to headlines concerning Trump's Economic Advisor Gary Cohn? A delicious "Snow Cohn," of course (my team of writers assured me that was worth what I paid).
In all seriousness, there were some serious tweets earlier today concerning Cohn's potential resignation and there was certainly a snowball rally that followed. Interestingly enough, even when the tweets were debunked (he's not really resigning) there wasn't a profound bounce back in the initial market movement. While some might suspect the terror attacks in Spain were the reason for that, we probably would have seen a bigger reaction in $/Yen and European equities futures were that the exclusive case.
Spain may have contributed to the overall demand for bonds in the afternoon, but it's clear that the Cohn headlines got the snowball rolling in the morning.
The thing about snowball buying (or selling)--especially late in the late Summer--is that traders have "one and done" stop-losses set up to either book profits (or guard against losses) on previous bond sales (or purchases). Additionally, there can be other programmatic buying that doesn't have a built in code to "sell bonds if the news turns out to be fake." All the trading program knows is that a certain level was hit, so it's time to buy.
As such, the Cohn headlines ended up created a lasting rally for bonds despite their inaccuracy--a Snow Cohn that didn't melt in the sun. What a world!