Treasuries Close Roughly Flat After Seeing Early Strength

(RTTNews) - After failing to sustain an early move to the upside, treasuries gave back ground and spent most of Thursday's trading lingering near the unchanged line.

Bond prices eventually finished the day roughly flat. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, edged down by less than a basis point at 4.271 percent.

Treasuries initially benefited from optimism about the outlook for interest rates following yesterday's monetary policy announcement by the Federal Reserve.

While the Fed left interest rates unchanged, as widely expected, the central bank also maintained its forecast for three interest rate cuts this year.

However, buying interest waned following the release of some upbeat U.S. economic data, including a report from the National Association of Realtors showing existing home sales unexpectedly continued to soar in the month of February.

NAR said existing home sale index spiked by 9.5 percent to an annual rate of 4.38 million in February after jumping by 3.1 percent to a rate of 4.00 million in January.

The continued surge came as a surprise to economists, who had expected existing home sales to pull back by 1.5 percent to a rate of 3.94 million.

With the unexpected increase, existing home sales reached their highest level since hitting an annual rate of 4.530 million in February 2023.

The Labor Department also released a report unexpectedly showing a slight drop by first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended March 16th.

The Labor Department said initial jobless claims edged down to 210,000, a decrease of 2,000 from the previous week's revised level of 212,000.

The dip surprised economists, who had expected jobless claims to rise to 215,000 from the 209,000 originally reported for the previous week.

A separate report released by the Conference Board showed its reading on leading U.S. economic indicators unexpectedly increased for the first time in two years in February.

The Conference Board said its leading economic index inched up by 0.1 percent in February after falling by 0.4 percent in January. Economists had expected the index to decrease by 0.3 percent.

The unexpected uptick marked the first increase by the leading economic index since February 2022.

Following the release of several key reports this morning, the U.S. economic calendar is relatively quiet on Friday, although traders are likely to keep an eye on remarks by Fed Chair Jerome Powell.