Treasury yields are higher this morning as they’ve been seemingly every day since the Federal Reserve cut rates in mid-September.At 4.15%, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury has risen to its highest level since late July, and since the close on 9/17, the day before the Fed’s 50 basis point (bps) cut, the 10-year's yield has risen on 15 of the 23 trading days (65%). Wasn’t the rate cut supposed to lower rates?

Given the sharp increase in Treasury bond yields since the September rate cut, we were curious how the current increase stacks up to moves in the 10-year yield following prior rate cuts from the Fed. Going back to 1994 when the Federal Reserve first started to announce its policy decisions on the day of their meetings, there have been 35 rate cuts (scheduled and unscheduled). Below, we show the change in the 10-year yield in the 34 calendar days (equivalent to the number of days since the most recent cut) from the close on the day before each cut.

With the 10-year yield now up 51 bps since the close the day before September’s cut, the current period ranks as the third largest since 1994. The only two cuts that were followed by a larger increase in yields were in June 2003 (103.1 bps) and November 2001 (87.1 bps), and the next closest was in March 2001 when the 10-year yield increased 47.5 bps.For all 35 rate cuts since 1994, the median change in the 10-year yield was a decline of 3 bps, and the 10-year yield increased 15 times (43%).

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