The battered U.S. bond market is finally getting a dose of good news.

A confluence of market quirks blamed for deepening the recent selloff may be running out of steam, stirring hope that the rise in bond yields will also peter out.

Surging yields in recent weeks have distorted other markets, extending the life expectancy of two other popular flavors of debt securities: mortgage bonds and Treasury futures. The longer the life of a debt instrument, the more investors are left exposed to changes in interest rates.

Investors adjusted in ways that led to selling of longer-term Treasurys, including 10-year notes and 30-year bonds. A vicious cycle was set in motion. But there are also mechanical limits to how far that cycle can go, and investors and analysts are now seeing signs of a slowdown.

"I think we're closer to the end in terms of some of these technical factors, and just the speed of the move," said Leah Traub, a fixed-income portfolio manager at Lord Abbett. From here, the direction of yields will come down more to "fundamental factors," such as shifts in oil prices, she added.

Investors are especially optimistic about the pressure coming from mortgage bond market.

Rising rates have chilled homeowners' interest in refinancing their mortgages. As that has happened, the average expected life of the loans underpinning mortgage-backed securities has been pushed out. But the bonds have now been extended about as far as they can go, analysts said.

There is now less pressure on holders of those bonds to hedge their portfolios by entering into derivatives contracts with counterparties who often then offset their own position by dumping Treasurys.

Hedging by mortgage bondholders has helped drive Treasury yields higher in recent weeks, but increasingly, "it's not going to continue to be a factor," said Amrut Nashikkar, head of interest rate derivatives strategy at Barclays

Treasury yields, which rise when bond prices fall, have been on a generally upward trend since March. But there have been a couple of periods of particularly big jumps, including at the end of September.

October has been choppier, and there have even been tentative signs recently of some stabilization. Yields on 10- and 30-year Treasurys have touched fresh 24-year highs this week, but they fell on Wednesday after a government auction of new 10-year notes met with particularly strong demand.

Yields then drifted higher overnight as oil prices climbed, only to reverse course once again on Thursday. Importantly, Thursday's rally was led by longer-term Treasurys -- a departure from the recent trend, which has seen longer-term yields climb even as short-term yields have held steady.

By the end of the session, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note was 5.232%, according to Tradeweb, down from as high as 5.365% early Wednesday before the 10-year note auction.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 4.1% to $104.28 a barrel. Stocks slumped. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% and the Nasdaq composite slipped more than 1.2%. Both benchmarks had closed at record highs earlier this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1%, or around 52 points.

While still cautious, some investors say they are now looking for opportunities to buy bonds.

For months, investors have ramped up their expectations for how high the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to fight inflation, going so far as to bet that the central bank would raise rates four more times by the end of next July.

However, the Fed itself has signaled fewer hikes, and several officials have said recently that they don't expect to raise rates this month. That has caused a modest shift lower in the market's rate expectations that some believe has further to go.

Significant threats to bonds remain including growing fiscal worries in Europe, the continuing U.S.-Iran conflict, and the ever present risk of another hot inflation report.

Investors and analysts are also divided over just how much risk remains from technical factors.

In recent weeks, most agree that selling pressure has emanated not just from mortgage bondholders but also from investors in U.S. Treasury futures. The issue there is that these futures contracts are underpinned by baskets of actual Treasurys, and the specific Treasury that the futures contract mirrors changes as bond yields move up and down.

The differences can be meaningful. Focus recently has been on one contract that is backed by 15- to 25-year Treasurys. If yields climb further to 6%, the underlying security would jump from a bond due in 2045 to one that matures five years later.

To manage risks to their portfolios, investors have already been reducing their positions in that contract, a step that has led other investors to sell actual Treasurys. But it is unclear as to how much further they have to go on aggregate.

Some believe that investors have been proactive given the attention on Wall Street to the issue, meaning that the pressure that they are putting on Treasurys may already largely be in the past.

In a report last week, Goldman Sachs analysts noted that "switch risks" in U.S. futures had likely played a role in the recent bond selloff but that its influence had likely diminished given "how actively asset managers appear to have managed their duration risk in recent months."

Other analysts are skeptical that asset managers as a whole have been that proactive.

"It's likely that the peak extension hedging comes later" said Eli Carter, U.S. rates strategist at Morgan Stanley. "Asset managers can be a little cautious and likely don't want to adjust their positions prematurely."