The benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yield made up some of its overnight losses on Thursday and climbed to a two-month high after the Federal Reserve said that it may soon curtail its asset purchase program.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note climbed 8 basis points to 1.41% for the first time since July, by 11:25 a.m. ET. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond rose 8.3 basis points to 1.829%. Yields move inversely to prices. One basis point is 0.01%.
The Fed said after its September meeting on Wednesday that the economic progress for the U.S. since the depths of the pandemic meant that the central bank may be able to withdraw some of its market support in the coming months, with the taper of its bond-buying program possibly concluding by the middle of 2022.
“If progress continues broadly as expected, the Committee judges that a moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted,” the FOMC’s post-meeting statement said.
Elsewhere, weekly jobless claims for the week ended Sept. 18 totaled 351,000, topping the 320,000 estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.
The Bank of England on Thursday kept monetary policy unchanged and downgraded economic growth projections for the third quarter of this year.
Policymakers at the BOE voted unanimously to leave its main interest rate unchanged at a record low of 0.1% and opted to stick to its asset purchase target of £875 billion ($1.2 trillion).
Meanwhile, the Norges Bank on Thursday become the first major Western central bank to raise interest rates following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
After cutting rates three times in 2020 due the economic fallout from the crisis, Norway’s central bank unanimously decided to raise rates to 0.25% from zero.
—CNBC’s Hannah Miao and Jesse Pound contributed to this article.
