(Bloomberg) -- Treasury yields plummeted to record lows Friday as concern about the global economic and financial impact of the coronavirus spurred demand for havens and traders amped up bets on central bank easing.

“We are staring at the abyss of a credit crunch,” said Kaspar Hense, a portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management, who said the market is pricing in a recession.

The moves came as stocks around the world plunged and futures pointed to another day of losses in U.S. equities. The number of coronavirus cases globally approached 100,000, as more infections were reported in the U.S., Germany and South Korea. Singapore warned of a global pandemic and Britain’s chief scientific adviser said a vaccine could take as long as 18 months to develop.

The yield on 10-year debt -- which has fallen by more than half in just over two weeks -- dropped as much as 22 basis points to an unprecedented 0.6932%, before bouncing to around 0.77% as of 10:33 a.m. in London. The 30-year rate, meanwhile plunged as much as 27 basis points Friday to 1.2742%, also a record low. Other havens also rallied, with the yen climbing more than 1% to around 105 per dollar and bund yields became even more deeply negative.

“What we are seeing is symptomatic of not enough positive yielding, defensive assets within global fixed income,” said John Taylor, a money manager at AllianceBernstein. “Central banks are doing everything they can to provide stimulus, which can add fuel to the flames of the bond rally.”

The Federal Reserve earlier this week joined central bank peers in providing support to the economy and markets. It slashed its target by half a point at an emergency meeting to a range of 1.00% to 1.25%. But traders are betting they will have to do much more. Fed funds futures contracts now indicate that the U.S. central bank benchmark will drop to less than a quarter of a percentage point in the second half of this year.

“I can make some exploding noises with my mouth, which about sums it up,” said Ranko Berich, head of market analysis at Monex Europe Ltd.

(Updates throughout)

To contact the reporters on this story: William Shaw in London at wshaw20@bloomberg.net;Benjamin Purvis in New York at bpurvis@bloomberg.net;John Ainger in Brussels at jainger@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Dobson at pdobson2@bloomberg.net, Neil Chatterjee

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