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Treasury Yields Hold Steady as Investors Digest Fed Rate Decision

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U.S. Treasury yields held steady Thursday as investors digested the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision and assessed the outlook for monetary policy.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury was little changed at 3.396%. The 2-year Treasury yield dipped more than 1 basis point to 4.092%.

Yields and prices have an inverted relationship. One basis point is equivalent to 0.01%.

Weekly jobless claims were lower than expected at 183,000, while economists polled by Dow Jones expected a print of 195,000. The data comes a day before the Labor Department releases its monthly nonfarm report, which is expected to show the economy added 187,000 jobs in January.

Tech stocks rallied Thursday on the back of better-than-expected results from Meta. The Facebook-parent company surged about 23% in its best day since 2013 after reporting a fourth-quarter revenue beat and announced a $40 billion stock buyback.

On Wednesday, the Fed concluded its first meeting of the year with a 25 basis point rate hike. That marked a slowdown of the pace of rate hikes compared to previous increases.

The central bank had hiked rates by 50 basis points at its last meeting in December and implemented 75 basis point increases at each of its previous four meetings.

However, the central bank also indicated that rates would rise further, reigniting concerns about whether the pace of rate increases and keeping rates elevated for longer could drag the U.S. economy into a recession.

The Fed has been hiking interest rates in an effort to curb persistently high inflation, which it said on Wednesday was cooling slightly.

Earnings season continues with Apple, Alphabet and Amazon among those reporting on Thursday.

— CNBC's Fred Imbert contributed to this report

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