Longer-term yields inch lower as market seeks Fed policy details

CHICAGO: US Treasury yields on the longer end of the curve slipped on Monday as the market looked for more details on the Federal Reserve's policy to keep interest rates low while tolerating higher inflation.

The benchmark 10-year yield was last down 1.1 basis points at 0.7179%. The market will be digging into remarks from several Fed officials scheduled to speak this week. With a rise in the 30-year yield last week, some investors said the US central bank may need to address the possibility of expanding its purchases of longer-dated debt at its mid-September policy meeting. "That's the sort of incremental detail people are looking to understand and it's certainly within the realm of possibilities," said Bill Merz, head of fixed income research at US Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.

He added that the market will also focus on Friday's release of August employment data.

"The jobs reports are just critical insight into the pace of the recovery," he said. "It has the potential to put incremental pressure on Congress to start taking the next round of fiscal negotiations more seriously."

Democrats in Congress and the White House on Friday remained at odds on how much to spend in the next round of stimulus to aid the coronavirus-hit economy.

The two-year US Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, was last unchanged at 0.1348%.

A closely watched part of the US Treasury yield curve measuring the gap between yields on two- and 10-year Treasury notes, which is viewed as an indicator of economic expectations, was last at 58.10 basis points, just over a basis point lower than at Friday's close.