U.S. Treasury yields were mixed Thursday as investors digested minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting and considered the outlook for inflation and interest rates.
At 4:04 p.m. ET, the yield on the 10-year Treasury was more than 2 basis points higher at 4.282%, reaching its highest level since October 2022. Meanwhile, the 2-year Treasury was down more than 4 basis points at 4.933%.
Yields and prices have an inverted relationship and one basis point is equivalent to 0.01%.
Investors weighed what could be next for inflation and Federal Reserve monetary policy as they digested the minutes from the central bank’s last meeting in July, which were released on Wednesday.
Policymakers noted that concerns about inflation remained and could prompt them to tighten monetary policy depending on the state of the economy, meaning additional rate hikes could be ahead.
That comes as many investors have been hoping, and anticipating, that the Fed’s 25 basis point rate increase announced at the July meeting marked the end of the central bank’s rate-hiking campaign. The Fed has been increasing rates since early 2022 in an effort cool the economy and bring inflation back to its 2% target range.
In July’s meeting minutes, Fed officials noted that inflation was still too high, but there were signs that pressures from higher prices are easing.
Fresh inflation data has been released since the central bank’s July meeting and painted a mixed picture. July’s consumer price index rose in line with expectations by 0.2% on a monthly basis, whereas the month’s producer price index came in slightly above forecasts at 0.3% compared with the previous month.
Jobless claims numbers for the week ending August 12 came in just below estimates. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s manufacturing index in August reported an increase from July, and also came above expectations.
