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The U.S. Treasuries traded range bound Wednesday ahead of the Federal Reserve’s December monetary policy meeting minutes. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note hovered around 2.45 percent, the super-long 30-year bond yield fell nearly 1 basis point to 3.04 percent and the yield on short-term 2-year note bounced 1/2 basis point to 1.23 percent by 12:00 GMT.
The minutes from the 13 - 14 December FOMC meeting will be published Wednesday, 4 January at 19:00 GMT. Markets will likely pay close attention to this release in an attempt to estimate the Federal Reserve's likely next step, particularly anything that might trigger a move to resume pausing for an extended period.
Given the well-anticipated move to raise rates at the December meeting, markets will look towards any significant benchmark measures of note (employment or otherwise) that could possibly provide a guide for policy moving forward. Though the Fed Funds rate is expected to remain exceptionally low for some time, the debate over the timing of the Fed’s next move is something that could receive additional clarity via these minutes.
We expect Treasuries will continue to drift lower in the coming weeks as markets look to assess the relative strength of data as we move into 2017, something that could yield a slightly more aggressive Fed than was laid-out by the updated FOMC forecasts in December (already looking for 75 basis points of tightening over the course of the year).
Lastly, investors will remain keen to focus on the upcoming economic data and events, highlighted by ADP nonfarm employment change, initial jobless claims, Markit composite PMI, ISM non-manufacturing employment, service PMI and employment data on Friday.
Also, markets will look ahead to FOMC Member Jerome Powell and Neel Kashkari speech over the weekends.
Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Futures traded 4 points higher at 2,256.5 by 12:50 GMT. While at 12:00 GMT, the FxWirePro's Hourly Dollar Strength Index stood neutral at +18.81 (higher than +75 represent a bullish trend).
