NEW YORK: Interest rates on US Treasury bills rose early Wednesday as some traders anticipated the Federal Reserve might signal it would raise rates later this year due to a strengthening jobs market.
Analysts expect Fed policy-makers, who are holding a two-day policy meeting that ends on Wednesday, to remove the word "patient" in reference to the timing of a rate increase in a statement expected to be issued at 2 p.m. (1600 GMT).
Analysts said such a change is a signal from the Fed to prepare markets that a rate increase could occur as early as June.
Amid expectations of the first Fed tightening in nine years, some investors refrained from buying new T-bill issues this week and traders have limited their short-term borrowing in the repurchase agreement (repo) market to fund bets across markets, analysts said.
"The market is getting very cautious. People are really trying to hedge their bets," said Gennadiy Goldberg, interest rates strategist at TD Securities in New York.
On the open market, one-month T-bill rate was up 1 basis point at 0.050 percent after earlier hitting 0.061 percent which was the highest since early December, while the one-year bill rate was 1 basis point higher at 0.271 percent after touching 0.278 percent which was its highest since April 2011, according to Reuters data.
In the repo market, the interest rate that banks and bond dealers to obtain overnight cash was last quoted at 0.13-0.16 percent after opening at 0.21 percent, ICAP data showed . On Tuesday, the overnight repo rate hit 0.29 percent which was the highest since Jan. 2.
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