Investors piled into government bonds and quickly recalibrated their expectations for interest rate increases in response to the new Covid-19 variant first identified in South Africa.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond fell as low as 1.500% Friday, from 1.644% before the Thanksgiving trading holiday, one of its biggest intraday percentage-point drops since the initial coronavirus market panic in March 2020. Bond prices rise as yields fall.