By Deborah Levine, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Treasury prices turned down Thursday after ADP said private employers added considerably more jobs than expected last month, but traders took the data with a grain of salt.
Yields on 10-year notes 10_YEAR +0.81% , which move inversely to prices, turned up 2 basis point to 2.01%. A basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.
Thirty-year bond yields 30_YEAR +0.63% rose 3 basis points to 3.06%.
Yields on 2-year notes 2_YEAR +1.50% were little changed at 0.27%.
Data based on a sampling of ADP payroll reports showed the private sector adding an estimated 325,000 jobs in December, more than the 178,000 that had been forecast, according to RBC Capital Markets. Read about ADP data.
Analysts noted that its notoriously hard to accurately gauge year-end economic data and that last December, ADP’s numbers were quite far from the government’s broader nonfarm payrolls data for the month. The Labor Department releases its December unemployment report on Friday.
“Nonetheless, this report adds to the list of more encouraging indications on the labor market,” said economists at RDQ Economics.
Just after that, markets registered little reaction to a government report showing said initial jobless claims fell to 372,000 last week, close to what economists expected. See story on jobless claims.
Still to come is the Institute for Supply Management’s index on non-manufacturing sectors and the Treasury Department’s announcement of how much in debt it will auction next week.
Treasury yields are seen flitting within a relatively narrow range as continued worries about European sovereign debt and the banking sector maintain demand for the relative safety of U.S. debt, while the outlook for the largest global economy makes further improvement. Read about Treasury activity Wednesday.
