The US Treasuries crawled into the black on Thursday after data showed regional manufacturing did not flourish as much as expected in early February, which offset upbeat comments from a Federal Reserve official.
"Obviously, you can see the market is not moving much today day-to-day based on this data. Even volatility indices are extremely low across the board," said Joseph Shatz, government strategist at Merrill Lynch.
"Basically, the market got a lot of very important numbers in the last week or two and it's going to be kind of quiet until (traders) get some more major information that changes their view that the Fed will be on hold for a while," he said.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury rose by 6/32 in price to hold at 4.03 percent on the day.
The 10-year note has tried and failed several times to break below 4.00 percent, a level which has become a sturdy floor in recent months.
Because sporadic weakness in some economic indicators has not persuaded investors that the US economic recovery really is faltering, the market has restricted itself to a very tight near-term range of 4.00 to 4.10 percent.
Treasuries came under fire earlier when a rise in the dollar curbed speculation that Asian central banks would enter the market to keep their own currencies weak.
Many of the dollars bought in intervention have ended up in Treasuries in recent months and the market has become very sensitive to any move in the currency.
The Fed reported late on Thursday that foreign central bank holdings of US debt rose to $1.142 trillion in the week to February 18. Market participants had expected another rise, reflecting central bank participation in last week's $56 billion US government debt sale, as well as ongoing intervention by the Bank of Japan.
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Michael Moskow said on Thursday the central bank could raise interest rates even in an election year and would do so if needed.