Treasuries Close Modestly Higher Following Choppy Trading Session

(RTTNews) - Treasuries showed a lack of direction over the course of the trading session on Thursday before closing modestly higher.

Bond prices spent the session bouncing back and forth across the unchanged line but managed to end the day on an upswing. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, edged down by 1.4 basis points to 2.343 percent.

With the slight decrease on the day, the ten-year yield ended the session at its lowest closing level in well over a month.

The choppy trading on the day came as traders seemed reluctant to make any significant moves ahead of the release of the Labor Department's closely watched monthly jobs report on Friday.

The report is expected to show an increase of about 180,000 jobs in March, while the unemployment rate is expected to hold at 4.7 percent.

An upcoming meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping also kept some traders on the sidelines.

Trump and Xi are scheduled to hold a two-day meeting at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, with the issues of trade and North Korea likely to be key areas of discussion.

On the economic front, the Labor Department released a report showing a bigger than expected drop in initial jobless claims in the week ended April 1st.

The Labor Department said initial jobless claims fell to 234,000, a decrease of 25,000 from the previous week's revised level of 259,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to edge down to 250,000.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department announced the details of next week's auctions of three-year and ten-year and thirty-year bonds on Thursday.

The Treasury said it plans to sell $24 billion worth of three-year notes next Monday, $20 billion worth of ten-year notes next Tuesday and $12 billion worth of thirty-year bonds next Wednesday.

The monthly jobs report is likely to be in focus on Friday, overshadowing separate reports on wholesale inventories and consumer credit.

Traders are also likely to keep an eye on any developments out of Trump's highly anticipated meeting with his Chinese counterpart.