NEW YORK: US Treasury debt prices fell on Monday in choppy trading as investors took profits on gains fueled by weak Japanese economic data, ahead of the release this week of the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting.
Market participants expect the Fed minutes to show optimism about the U.S. economy that should keep the U.S. central bank on track to raise interest rates sometime next year.
"Treasuries have been strong all year and we did see some buying after Japan's GDP data," said Aaron Kohli, interest rate strategist at BNP Paribas in New York.
"But we have sort of come off the low in yields because we have the Fed minutes coming up. There's really little scope for the Fed to be dovish given the run of pretty solid U.S. data."
U.S. industrial production for October was weaker than expected, falling 0.1 percent, but the report was decent compared with Japan's gross domestic product data, which fell unexpectedly by an annualized 1.6 percent in the July-September quarter.
That followed a 7.3 percent contraction in the previous quarter, caused by a rise in Japan's national sales tax, and ran counter to economists' forecasts for a 2.1 percent rebound.
"Overall, the U.S. economy is doing so much better than the rest of the world," Kohli said.
In mid-morning trading, the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes were last down 7/32 in price to yield 2.34 percent from 2.32 percent from late Friday. Five-year notes were down 3/32 to yield 1.62 percent.
U.S. 30-year Treasury bonds were down 17/32 to yield 3.06 percent, from a yield of 3.05 percent late Friday.
Comments
Comments are closed.