Today's 10yr Treasury auction brought strong demand.  Across the board, the auction stats were much stronger than expected.  The only real problem was that the awarded yield was the highest of any 10yr auction since July, and that goes a long way toward justifying to strong demand.  

Before the auction, however, bonds were already having an OK day.  At the very least, they weren't adding on to the disconcerting weakness seen in the previous two days.  In fact, there were signs at the open of buyers buying of their own volition (i.e. there was no economic report or mirrored move in stocks driving the trade).  Then around 11:44am, White House comments on the US/China trade deal sent stocks lower with bond yields following.

The risk to reading too much into the auction is that it happened to occur not only when bonds were in stronger demand due to the temporary risk-off vibes, but also at yield levels that may merely be providing some technical support for buyers.  Moreover, traders may not want to rock the boat too much before the 3 day weekend coming up.  Bottom line, today was better than it might have been, but we should probably reserve excitement until we see how things are shaping up next week.