Price decline takes 10-year yield over 2pc

NEW YORK: US Treasury debt prices eased on Wednesday, extending a recent selloff ahead of a $24 billion government auction of 10-year notes.

Yields on 10-year Treasuries last stood at 2.0141 percent, reflecting a price decline of 6/32. It was the highest yield on notes since January 9, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Thirty-year bonds were off 20/32 in price and last yielded 2.6007 percent. Price declines in intermediate- and short-dated maturities were smaller.

Trading was moderate, in part because of a holiday in Japan, and focused on the note sale scheduled for later on Wednesday, according to Ian Lyngen, senior government bond strategist at CRT in Stamford, Connecticut.

Demand for the bonds should be healthy and include a solid foreign bid, since comparable sovereign bonds have much lower rates, Lyngen said.

Germany's 10-year currently yields 0.359 percent. U.S. yields have climbed in recent weeks on growing signs America's labor markets are expanding as other big economies battle slow growth.

At the end of January, U.S. 10-year yields were 1.668 percent.

"The foreign interest at 10-year refunding auctions has increased in the last few cycles," Lyngen said. "On average, foreign accounts are awarded 23 percent of the auction. If anything, we'd bias that a little bit higher for this afternoon's auction."

The Treasury department sold $24 billion of three-year notes on Tuesday and is also scheduled to sell $16 billion of 30-years on Thursday.

Bonds have been sinking, in part, because an unexpectedly strong U.S. jobs report on Friday suggested the labor market's strength bolsters the case for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term rates sooner than later.

Another data report on Tuesday said America had more than 5 million job openings in December, the indicator's best level since 2001.

Lyngen said Treasuries were seeing few safety bids despite wide anxiety in global markets about a standoff between Greece and its fellow eurozone countries.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was scheduled to meet euro zone finance ministers to deal with the nation's debt crisis at a meeting at 11:30 a.m. (1630 GMT) after his new leftist-led government won a parliamentary confidence vote for its refusal to extend an international bailout.