The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit 1.68% early on Friday, after the latest weekly jobless claims report came in lower than expected in the previous session.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose less than a basis point to 1.6846% at 4:20 a.m. ET. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond fell less than a basis point to 2.1257%. Yields move inversely to prices and 1 basis point is equal to 0.01%.
The Labor Department reported that 290,000 jobless claims were filed during the week ended Oct. 16, versus a Dow Jones estimate of 300,000 claims.
Employment data is one economic indicator being monitored by the Federal Reserve to help it decide when it should start pulling back emergency stimulus measures. In minutes released last week, Fed officials indicated that the central bank was nearing its economic goals and would soon start to normalize its monetary policy, starting with the winding down of its bond buying program.
Raising interest rates is another part of this normalization. Fed Atlanta President Raphael Bostic told CNBC on Thursday that he sees an interest rate hike coming in the “late third, maybe early fourth” quarter of 2022, as inflation persists.
Paul Gambles, co-founder and managing director at MBMG Group, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that he thought that there was a “huge misunderstanding, particularly by policymakers, as to what’s really happening out there” in terms of supply chain issues and inflation.
“There’s no indication of genuine demand-driven inflation, this is all still a protracted supply shock,” he said.
Referring to Bostic’s comments, Gambles said that if the Fed was “determined to tighten” monetary policy that would be “disastrous for capital markets” because central bank stimulus was the main thing supporting capital markets.
In terms of data due out on Friday, Markit is set to release its October flash purchasing managers’ index at 9:45 a.m. ET.
There are no auctions scheduled to be held on Friday.
— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this market report.
