U.S. government debt prices hovered above and below the flatline on Wednesday.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was a touch lower at around 3.055 percent at 5:00 a.m. ET, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond dipped into the red at 3.311 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
On Wednesday, the main focus for bond investors will be a speech by the Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Powell is expected to speak at the Economic Club of New York. During the event, he is slated to talk about the Fed’s framework for monitoring financial stability.
Ahead of the event, Trump said to the Washington Post that he wasn’t “even a little bit happy” with his appointment of Powell as the Fed’s Chair, adding that he thought the central bank’s recent actions were “way off-base”.
On the data front, the gross domestic product (GDP) figures are due out at 8:30 a.m. ET. In addition to this, mortgage applications are due out at 7 a.m. ET, followed by new home sales and the Richmond Fed’s manufacturing survey at 10 a.m. ET.
The U.S. Treasury is scheduled to auction $32 billion in seven-year notes and $18 billion in two-year floating rate notes (FRNs).
Elsewhere, trade continues to keep investors on edge. Ahead of a G-20 summit in Argentina later this week, President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday that it was “highly unlikely” that the U.S. would delay from increasing tariff levels to 25 percent, in regards to $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Trade fears however eased on Tuesday, after White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said that the administration had resumed talks with China “at all levels.” The summit, set to take place on Friday and Saturday, is expected to see both Trump and China’s Xi Jinping present.
