NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Treasury prices rose Tuesday, pushing yields down, as investors followed a typical pattern of buying bonds on the last day of the month to remain in line with benchmark indexes.
Yields on 10-year notes (UST10Y 2.48, -0.05, -1.82%) , which move inversely to prices, fell 4 basis points to 2.50%. A basis point is 0.01%.
Yields on the benchmark security touched 2.42% last week, the lowest level since January 2009 -- before the stock market hit its lows during the credit crisis and recession.
Yields on 2-year notes (UST2YR 0.49, -0.01, -2.40%) declined 1 basis point to 0.49%. They fell to an all-time low of 0.45% a week ago.
Thirty-year bond yields (UST30Y 3.53, -0.05, -1.31%) fell 4 basis points to 3.55%. Last week, they declined to 3.46%, the lowest since March 2009.
"The Treasury market was firm overnight, with yields edging lower on month-end extension demand and weakness in global equities," said strategists at CRT Capital Group.
Still to come are data on home prices and consumer confidence and the minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's recent meeting.
"We get a lot of information both today and the rest of the week, and I expect it will be a choppy market," said strategists at RBS Securities.
The key report will come Friday, when the U.S. Labor Department is expected to say that private employers added 30,000 jobs in August and that the unemployment rate ticked higher. See story on jobs-report expectations.
Buyers tend to materialize on the last trading day of every month, when benchmark bond indexes add any debt that was sold during the period, which usually extended the duration of the index.
Duration is a measure of price sensitivity to a change in interest rates, and is partly determined by maturity. Fund managers who try to match their holdings to benchmark indexes therefore buy recently issued debt at month's end.
