Treasuries Close Nearly Flat For Second Consecutive Session

(RTTNews) - After ending the previous session roughly flat, treasuries showed a lack of direction throughout the trading day on Thursday.

Bond prices spent the day bouncing back and forth across the unchanged line before closing nearly flat for the second straight session.

Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its prices, edged down by less than a basis point to 1.986 percent.

The lackluster performance came as traders digested mixed news that led to some uncertainty about the appeal of safe havens such as bonds.

Treasuries initially saw some weakness on the day following news of an impending ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

Marathon peace talks involving the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France resulted in a ceasefire agreement set to go into effect on February 15th.

The deal involves a withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called "extremely important."

However, traders were also presented with some disappointing U.S. economic data, including a Commerce Department report showing a bigger than expected drop in retail sales.

The report said retail sales fell by 0.8 percent in January after slumping by 0.9 percent in December. Economists had expected sales to drop by 0.5 percent.

The continued decrease in retail sales came as falling gasoline prices contributed to another steep drop in sales by gas stations.

While the data contributed to some strength among treasuries, the buying interest was offset by the results of the Treasury Department's auction of $16 billion worth of thirty-year bonds, which attracted below average demand.

The thirty-year bond auction drew a high yield of 2.56 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.26, while the ten previous thirty-year bond auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.47.

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

Reports on consumer sentiment and import and export prices may attract some attention on Friday, although trading activity may be somewhat subdued ahead of the long weekend.