10-year Treasury yield hits record low as coronavirus sends investors fleeing to safety

• The 10-year Treasury note hit an intraday low Tuesday after bouncing near the threshold for months, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Fears that economies might shut down to stem a global coronavirus contagion fueled bearish trading Tuesday and sent the yield over the edge.
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The yield on the 10-year Treasury note hit a record intraday low Tuesday as coronavirus rocked risk markets and investors flooded into safe-havens.

The benchmark note hit a yield of 1.322%, The Wall Street Journal previously reported, citing Tradeweb data. The bond had traded near that threshold for months previously, slipping as low as 1.377% Monday. But a spike in coronavirus cases in Italy, South Korea, and Iran - where the deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, himself contracted the virus - pushed the note over the edge, The Journal reported.

The 10-year Treasury note is a key gauge markets turn to as a signal of how the US economy is doing. Yields, which move inversely to price, help to set borrowing costs on a range of other consumer, business, and municipal market products.

Falling yields typically indicates a bearish view of future growth. Though new cases of coronavirus within China are on the decline, the spike in international cases has investors spooked because efforts to stem contagion could undermine business activity, The Journal reported.

Elsewhere in markets, signs of coronavirus stress were ubiquitous: The Dow was down over 500 points midday, a 1.86% decline, while the S&P 500 index fell 1.77%. Mortgage rates hit an eight-year low, dragged down by coronavirus fears, and oil tumbled.