Treasuries Close Nearly Flat Following Lackluster Session

(RTTNews) - After moving sharply higher over the past several sessions, treasuries showed a lack of direction during trading on Friday.

Bond prices spent the day bouncing back and forth across the unchanged line before closing nearly flat. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, crept up by less than a basis point to 1.462 percent.

The slight uptick on the day came after the ten-year yield ended the previous session at its lowest closing level in over three months.

Traders seemed reluctant to make significant moves ahead of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting scheduled for next week.

The Fed is widely expected to leave its monetary policy unchanged, but traders will be looking for any clues the central bank is considering tapering its asset purchases.

Yesterday's report from the Labor Department showed consumer price inflation reached the highest level in nearly thirteen years in May, although Fed officials have repeatedly downplayed the risks of prolonged inflation.

Traders will likely pay close attention to any changes to the Fed's comments about inflation, with previous statements largely attributing rising inflation to "transitory factors."

In U.S. economic news, preliminary data released by the University of Michigan showed a bigger than expected rebound in consumer sentiment in the month of June.

The report said the consumer sentiment index climbed to 86.4 in June after falling to 82.9 in May. Economists had expected the index to rise to 84.0.

The Fed announcement will be in the spotlight next week, although traders are also likely to keep an eye on reports on producer prices, retail sales, industrial production, and housing starts.