The last month had been a wild ride for U.S. Treasuries and April seems to be no different. The yield of the S&P/BGCantor Current 10 Year U.S. Treasury Bond Index closed the half day trading session for the Good Friday holiday at a 1.86%. The yield is a two month low as rates have bounced around since the 1.81% reached on February 5th, 2015. Friday’s speculation that the Fed won’t be able to raise rates anytime soon came off of the back of a slowdown in jobs growth as measured by the Change in Nonfarm Payroll number which was 126K versus the surveyed 245K expected.
Prior to Friday’s trading, the yield of this index had backed up 13 basis points reaching 2% after a 1.87% monthly low on March 24th. The 24th low had resulted from a rally down in yield (38 bps) after the peak for the month of 2.25% on March 6th. The return of the index for March was 0.76% MTD and 3.06% YTD while in April the index has returned 0.66% MTD and 3.74% YTD.