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The stock market’s latest coronavirus scare might be tapering off, but investors in U.S. bonds are still clamoring for 30-year bonds—even at record-low yields.

The U.S. Treasury sold $19 billion of long-term bonds with a record-low yield of 2.061% on Thursday. Not only that, but investor demand was the highest for any sale of a new bond since August 2014, according to Tom Simons and Ward McCarthy, strategists at Jefferies.

That shows investors’ hunger for yield in a global market with nearly $14 trillion of negative-yielding debt. It could also be a sign that some investors are hesitant to take on additional risk until they know more about the potential spread of coronavirus.

“The demand for the auction was amazing considering the low coupon,” Simons and McCarthy wrote in a Thursday note. “However, yield is hard to find around the world.”

Buyers submitted $2.43 of bids for every $1 of Treasuries sold on Thursday. That left bond traders called primary dealers—a group of banks required to bid at auctions—with their second-smallest share of an auction on record, the strategists said.

That result would make more sense if the sale had come earlier in the day. U.S. stocks opened with sharp losses thanks to new data showing a jump in the number of coronavirus cases in China.

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The news fueled worries about global growth and prompted investors to buy safer securities, such as Treasuries. But by the time of the sale at 1 p.m. Eastern time, the major U.S. stock indexes had recovered most of their losses.

So the demand for long-term debt isn’t solely the result of a temporary flight from global stocks. Yields on longer-term Treasuries—those maturing in 10 and 30 years—remained lower in afternoon trading, even as some shorter-term notes’ yields recovered all of their early losses.

“Low yields may well be a sign that bond markets are correctly priced for the likely risks posed by the virus outbreak,” wrote Gaurav Saroliya, director of macro strategy with Oxford Economics.

Write to Alexandra Scaggs at alexandra.scaggs@barrons.com