Treasuries Close Modestly Higher Following Choppy Trading Day

(RTTNews) - Treasuries showed a lack of direction throughout much of the trading day on Thursday but managed to close modestly higher.

Bond prices moved to the upside going into the close of trading to finish the day in positive territory. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, dipped 1.2 basis points to 2.347 percent.

The choppy trading seen for much of the session came as traders seemed reluctant to make any significant moves ahead of the release of a slew of economic data on Friday.

Traders largely seemed to shrug off a report from the Labor Department showing that initial jobless claims rose by more than anticipated in the week ended November 8th.

The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 290,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 278,000. Economists had expected claims to tick up to 280,000.

With the bigger than expected increase, jobless claims rose to their highest level since hitting 295,000 in the week ended September 20th.

The results of the Treasury Department's auction of $16 billion worth of thirty-year bonds also didn't seem to attract much attention.

The thirty-year bond auction drew a high yield of 3.092 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.29, while the ten previous thirty-year bond auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.46.

The bid-to-cover ratio is a measure of demand that indicates the amount of bids for each dollar worth of securities being sold.

As mentioned above, economic data is likely to take center stage on Friday, with traders likely to keep a close eye on the Commerce Department's report on retail sales.

The retail sales report may overshadow the other reports on import and export prices, consumer sentiment, and business inventories.