Treasury yields rose slightly on Monday after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Sunday reiterated the central bank’s commitment to maintaining loose monetary policy.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note climbed to 1.675% in early afternoon trading. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond ticked up to 2.35%. Yields move inversely to prices.
Powell told CBS 60 Minutes in an interview that aired Sunday that it was “highly unlikely” that the Fed would raise interest rates “anything like this year.”
“I’m in a position to guarantee that the Fed will do everything we can to support the economy for as long as it takes to complete the recovery,” he added.
Investors were also watching an auction of $38 billion of 10-year notes, though the results didn’t appear to move the market.
“Bottom line, this auction is best described as blah and yields in response aren’t doing much with the 10 yr at 1.67%, where it was right before the results hit the tape,” Bleakley Advisory Group’s Peter Boockvar said in a note. “We seem to be carving out a yield trading range of 1.62% and 1.77% on the upside. I expect this range to hold for a few months until some are disabused of the belief that the current inflation jump will be transitory.”
Investors will be watching out for developments on President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package, known as the American Jobs Plan. Biden is due to meet with bipartisan members of Congress on Monday to try to get backing for his $2 trillion infrastructure plan.
Auctions were also held for $57 billion of 13-week bills, $54 billion of 26-week bills and $58 billion of 3-year notes.
