Treasuries Show Notable Move Back To The Upside

After turning lower over the course of the previous session, treasuries showed a strong move back to the upside during trading on Thursday.

Bond prices moved steadily higher throughout much of the session before closing firmly in positive territory. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price slid 5.5 basis points to 1.524 percent.

Treasuries extended the recovery attempt seen late in Wednesday’s session as traders continued to digest the Federal Reserve’s latest monetary policy announcement.

The Fed announced plans to begin scaling back its asset purchases but signaled it won’t be in a hurry to begin raising interest rates.

Meanwhile, bond traders largely shrugged off a Labor Department report showing another modest decrease in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the week ended October 30th.

The report said initial jobless claims dipped to 269,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 283,000.

Economists had expected initial jobless claims to edge down to 277,000 from the 281,000 originally reported for the previous week.

Jobless claims decreased for the fifth straight week, once again falling to their lowest level since hitting 256,000 in the week ended March 14, 2020.

Meanwhile, a separate report from the Commerce Department showed the U.S. trade deficit widened much more than expected in the month of September.

The Commerce Department said the trade deficit widened to $80.9 billion in September from a revised $72.8 billion in August.

Economists had expected the deficit to widen to $74.1 billion from the $73.3 billion originally reported for the previous month.

The wider than expected trade deficit came as the value of exports tumbled by 3.0 percent to $207.6 billion, while the value of imports rose by 0.6 percent to $288.5 billion.

Trading on Friday is likely to be driven by reaction to the Labor Department’s closely watched monthly employment report for October.

Employment is expected to jump by 425,000 jobs in October after rising by 194,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate is expected to edge down to 4.7 percent from 4.8 percent.

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