Treasuries Close Nearly Flat For Second Straight Day

(RTTNews) - After ending the previous session roughly flat, treasuries continued to show a lack of direction during trading on Wednesday.

Bond prices moved to the upside in afternoon trading but pulled back toward the unchanged line going into the close. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, edged down by less than a basis point to 2.370 percent.

Treasuries closed nearly flat for the second straight day amid a lack of major U.S. economic data, with traders looking ahead to reports on producer prices and retail sales on Friday.

The buying interest briefly seen in afternoon trading came after the results of the Treasury Department's auction of $20 billion worth of ten-year notes showed slightly above average demand.

The ten-year note auction drew a high yield of 2.342 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.58, while the ten previous ten-year note auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.49.

The bid-to-cover ratio is a measure of demand that indicates the amount of bids for each dollar worth of securities being sold.

On Thursday, the Treasury is due to finish off this week's series of long-term securities auctions with the sale of $12 billion worth of thirty-year bonds.

Trading on Thursday could also be impacted by reaction to reports on weekly jobless claims and import and export prices as well as speeches by several Federal Reserve officials.