Treasuries Finish Lackluster Session Roughly Flat

(RTTNews) - After coming under pressure during an abbreviated holiday session last Friday, treasuries showed a lack of direction during trading on Monday.

Bond prices spent much of the session lingering near the unchanged line. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, crept up by less than a basis point to 3.415 percent.

The choppy trading on the day came after treasuries fell sharply in the previous session following the release of the Labor Department's closely watched monthly jobs report.

The report said non-farm payroll employment climbed by 236,000 jobs in March after jumping by an upwardly revised 326,000 jobs in February.

Economists had expected employment to rise by about 240,000 jobs compared to the addition of 311,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department said the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent in March from 3.6 percent in February. The unemployment rate was expected to be unchanged.

On the heels of the report, CME Group's FedWatch Tool is currently indicating a 71.7 percent chance the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by a quarter point next month.

Traders were also looking ahead to key inflation data later in the week along with reports on retail sales and industrial production as well as the minutes of the latest Federal Reserve meeting.

A lack of major U.S. economic data may lead to choppy trading on Tuesday, as traders look ahead to the release of key data later in the week.