U.S. Treasuries climb ahead of FOMC members’ speeches, 5-year auction

The U.S. Treasuries climbed during Wednesday’s afternoon session ahead of a host of speeches by members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) – Evans, Brainard, George and Kaplan, all scheduled for later in the day and the 5-year auction, due to be held today by 17:00GMT for further direction in the debt market.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield suffered 1-1/2 basis points to 1.649 percent, the super-long 30-year bond yield remained tad higher to 2.100 percent and the yield on the short-term 2-year also edged 1-1/2 basis points up to 1.610 percent by 12:05GMT.

US political noise returned to the fore yesterday, with House Democrats eventually formally initiating impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump after market close while the US President berated China about its trade practices in his speech to the UN General Assembly. US stocks weakened in the course of the day – the S&P500 closed down 0.8 percent, its biggest decline in a month – and so perhaps unsurprisingly the main Asia-Pacific indices have also fallen back today, Daiwa Capital Markets reported.

The leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives announced last night a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Further, data from both sides of the Atlantic disappointed, with the US CB consumer confidence index falling more than expected in September and the business expectations component of Germany’s September Ifo deteriorating once again, Eurobank Economic Analysis & Financial Markets Research report.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Futures remained tad -0.13 percent down at 2,966.62 by 12:10GMT.