44billioncini di $ in 2y note in asta oggi
Treasuries Rise as Stocks Fall Before Housing, Confidence Data
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601009&sid=aDbaNTWmGDx8#
By Keith Jenkins and Wes Goodman
Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Treasuries advanced as U.S. stock futures fell before reports that may show declines in housing prices and consumer confidence, stoking demand for the relative safety of fixed-income assets.
The gains drove the yield on the 10-year note down from near the highest in almost six weeks. Figures last week showed consumer prices excluding food and energy fell in January, stoking speculation the Federal Reserve won’t raise interest rates in coming months. Fed Chairman
Ben S. Bernanke is scheduled to testify before congressional panels tomorrow and the next day following the scheduled sale of $44 billion of two- year notes today.
“The key point for today is the rather delicate timing of the two-year note auction before Bernanke’s testimony,” said
David Schnautz, an interest-rate strategist at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. Investors may be cautious about buying such short- term debt after the Fed’s surprise increase to the discount rate last week, Schnautz said.
The 10-year note
yield declined 2 basis points to 3.78 percent as of 6:45 a.m. in New York, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The 3.625 percent security due February 2020 gained 6/32, or $1.88 per $1,000 face amount, to 98 25/32. The yield reached 3.82 percent on Feb. 19. The two-year note yield dropped 2 basis points to 0.88 percent.
Futures for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index slid 0.3 percent. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index of European equities erased an early gain and was down 0.6 percent.
The two-year note sale is the second of four auctions this week totaling a record $126 billion. The difference between two- and 10-year yields was 2.90 percentage points, close to the record of 2.94 percentage points set Feb. 18.
Consumer Sentiment
“While supply could have some adverse impact on the front- end, month-end bond index extensions toward the end of the week should have a positive impact on the long end,”
Orlando Green, an interest-rate strategist at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank in London, said about the auction’s effect on two-year notes. That “should offer some temporary respite from the steepening pressures,” he said by phone.
Consumer
sentiment dropped in February for the first time since October, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists before the New York-based Conference Board reports the figure today. Home
prices in the U.S. declined 3.1 percent in December from November, a 36th straight month of decline, a separate report may show.
Inflation Outlook
The
difference between yields on 10-year
notes and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, a gauge of trader expectations for consumer prices, narrowed for a third day to 2.26 percentage points.
The consumer price index rose 0.2 percent in January, and fell 0.1 percent when excluding food and energy, the Labor Department said on Feb. 19. The core inflation rate has increased 1.6 percent in the past 12 months, below the average of 2.7 percent since the start of the 1990s.
Bond investors track these figures because increases in the cost of living erode the value of the fixed payments from debt.
Two-year notes rose for a second day yesterday as Fed Bank of San Francisco President
Janet Yellen said the U.S. economy will operate below potential this year and next. Now is “not the time to be tightening monetary policy,” Yellen said in a speech in San Diego.
The Fed will leave its target for overnight lending in a range of zero to 0.25 percent through June and raise it to 0.50 percent in the third quarter, according to a Bloomberg survey of banks and securities companies, with the most recent forecasts given the heaviest weightings.
Indirect Bidders
The government will auction $42 billion in five-year notes tomorrow and $32 billion of seven-year debt Feb. 25. It sold $8 billion in 30-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities yesterday.
Two-year notes yielded 0.94 percent in pre-auction trading, climbing from 0.88 percent at the prior sale of the securities on Jan. 26. Investors bid for 3.13 times the amount on offer at the previous auction, compared with an average of 3.03 for the past 10 sales.
Indirect bidders, the category of investors that includes foreign central banks, purchased 43.1 percent of the notes, versus the 10-sale average of 44.6 percent.
Two-year notes have returned 0.7 percent this year, versus a 0.8 percent loss for 30-year bonds, according to indexes compiled by Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit.
The sale of 30-year TIPS drew a yield of 2.229 percent. The
bid-to-cover ratio, which gauges demand by comparing total bids with the amount of bonds offered, was 2.45.
The bidding result “does not scream an A-plus auction,”
Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, wrote in a note to clients. “There has been a clear removal of inflationary concerns from the marketplace over the last few trading days and weeks.”