The critical spread between the 10-year Treasury yield and the 2-year yield inverted multiple times throughout Friday's trading session after President Donald Trump ordered American companies to steer clear of trade with Beijing.

The president tweeted Friday morning that he was ordering "our great American companies" to "immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA."

Early Friday afternoon, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note traded at 1.535%, while the yield on the 2-year Treasury note held at 1.513%, an inversion of a key segment of the U.S. yield curve. The rates dipped into and out of inversion throughout the rest of the trading session.

An inversion of the 2-10 yields is viewed by fixed income traders as a recession prognosticator, but trying to forecast exactly when GDP growth contracts is harder to project.

Inversions of that part of the curve have predated every recession over the past 50 years and the last five 2-10 inversions have all led to recessions. Still, even when it does predict a recession, yield curve inversion is, on average, 22 months early, according to Credit Suisse.

The movement in the bond market on Friday was largely pegged to Trump's social media barrage, which sparked fears on Wall Street that the trade war between the U.S. and China isn't close to a resolution and could worsen over the next few months. China announced earlier Friday that it will retaliate against new U.S. tariffs with its own levies on $75 billion more of U.S. goods and resume auto tariffs.

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