The 10-year note’s yield range of between 4.1% to 4.2% since mid-December has survived risk events including the December employment data, the US Justice Department’s actions against Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the prospect of American military action in Iran, Ian Lyngen, interest-rate strategist at BMO Capital Markets, observed in a report.

Benchmark yields held at 4.17% in early London trading on Friday.

“Investors have been left to ponder what would be required to push 10-year yields to 4.25% or 4.05%,” and “we’re reminded that historically when such a narrow range finally fails, it tends to be a bond-bearish event,” Lyngen wrote.

In September and October 2020, when 10-year yields were between 0.64% and 0.8% for a six-week stretch, they went on to more than double over the next four months amid the Covid vaccine rollout that promised economic recovery and as a federal infrastructure spending plan took shape. Those low levels for the 10-year yield rendered small changes more consequential than they are now.

What Bloomberg’s Strategists Say...

“I totted up the range for the 10-year yield over the last six weeks, and the results are a little sobering. The high closing yield has been 4.19% and the low was been 4.11%. That paltry range could’ve (and perhaps has) brought a bond operator to tears. Going back to 1962, that’s in the bottom 3.5% of all six-week yield ranges.”

— Cameron Crise, Macro strategist

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Other ways of measuring low volatility in the Treasury market include the 10-year note’s rolling one-month range, which at eight basis points is in the 99th percentile of readings since 2000. They also include low prices for options on interest-rate futures.