NEW YORK: US Treasuries prices held steady on Thursday as losses on Wall Street stocks revived safehaven demand for government debt, offsetting selling tied to more corporate supply and an upcoming $16 billion auction of 30-year bonds.
A heavy schedule of public speeches from top Federal Reserve officials also kept some investors on the sidelines as they await possible fresh clues on whether the central bank might raise interest rates at its Dec. 15-16 meeting.
"The sell-off in stocks has brought some safehaven bids back into bonds. It's taken some of the starch from the recent bond sell-off," said Larry Milstein, head of government and agency trading at R.W. Pressprich & Co. in New York.
Major US stock indexes fell in the wake of disappointing corporate results.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 0.6 percent. Benchmark 10-year Treasuries notes were little changed in price to yield 2.315 percent, flat from Tuesday.
The US bond market was closed on Wednesday for the Veterans Day holiday.
The Treasury Department will sell $16 billion of 30-year bonds at 1 p.m. (1800 GMT), the last leg of this week's quarterly refunding. The "when-issued" market showed traders expect the latest 30-year issue to sell at a yield of 3.095 percent , according to Tradweb. This would be the highest yield at a 30-year auction since June.
This week's refunding has been competing with the latest wave of corporate bond supply. So far this week, companies have raised more than $21 billion in the investment-grade credit market, according to IFR, a Thomson Reuters unit. In the meantime, six Fed officials were set to make public appearances on Thursday.
Earlier Thursday, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard repeated his support for the Fed raising interest rates.
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