Treasuries See Further Upside Following Yesterday's Advance

(RTTNews) - After moving notably higher over the course of the previous session, treasuries saw some further upside during trading on Thursday.

Bond prices climbed firmly into positive territory but pulled back off the best levels going into the close. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, fell by 2.9 basis points to 2.477 percent.

Treasuries saw continued strength following the release of the results of the Treasury Department's auction of $28 billion worth of seven-year notes, which attracted average demand.

The seven-year note auction drew a high yield of 2.284 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.54, while ten previous seven-year note auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.51.

The bid-to-cover ratio is a measure of demand that indicates the amount of bids for each dollar worth of securities being sold.

Today's seven-year note auction came after the Treasury sold $26 billion worth of two-year notes on Tuesday and $34 billion worth of five-year notes on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, the Labor Department released a report showing that initial jobless claims pulled back in line with estimates in the week ended December 24th.

The report said initial jobless claims dipped to 265,000, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 275,000. The drop in jobless claims matched economist estimates.

The modest decline came after jobless claims reached their highest level since the week ended June 11th in the previous week.

A report on Chicago-area business activity may attract some attention on Friday, although trading activity is likely to be subdued ahead of the long weekend.