Treasuries Finish Choppy Trading Modestly Higher

(RTTNews) - Treasuries showed a lack of direction over the course of the trading session on Tuesday before eventually ending the day modestly higher.

After spending the morning bouncing back and forth across the unchanged line, bond prices moved to the upside in afternoon trading. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, edged down by 1.9 basis points to 4.234 percent.

The higher close by treasuries may partly have reflected optimism about the outlook for interest rates following the Federal Reserve's monetary policy announcement last week.

While the Fed left interest rates unchanged, as widely expected, officials maintained their forecast for three rate cuts this year.

Following the Fed announcement, the chances of a 25 basis point rate cut in June have rebounded to 61.0 percent, according to CME Group's FedWatch Tool.

On the U.S. economic front, the Commerce Department released a report this morning showing a notable increase in new orders for U.S. manufactured durable goods in the month of February.

The report said durable goods orders jumped by 1.4 percent in February after plummeting by a revised 6.9 percent in January.

Economists had expected durable goods orders to shoot up by 1.3 percent compared to the 6.2 percent slump that had been reported for the previous month.

Orders for transportation equipment led the way higher, surging by 3.3 percent in February after plunging by 18.3 percent in January.

Excluding the rebound in orders for transportation equipment, durable goods orders climbed by 0.5 percent in February after falling by 0.3 percent in January. Economists had expected a 0.4 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the Conference Board released a separate report showing a slight deterioration in U.S. consumer confidence in the month of March.

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index slipped to 104.7 in March from a downwardly revised 104.8 in February.

Economists had expected the consumer confidence index to come in unchanged compared to the 106.7 originally reported for the previous month.

A lack of major U.S. economic data may lead to choppy trading on Wednesday ahead of the release of several key reports to close out the week.