Treasuries fell for the first time in four days as investors prepared to bid at three auctions of coupon-bearing debt totaling $66 billion starting tomorrow. U.S. government securities dropped after yields slid to the lowest level in almost four weeks in early Asian trading, making it less attractive to bid at this week’s sales. Treasuries surged April 6 when a Labor Department report showed U.S. employment growth fell short of forecasts in March. “The U.S. economic recovery is uneven, but it will continue,� said Hiroki Shimazu, an economist in Tokyo at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank by assets. “That will be negative for the Treasury market.� Ten-year yields rose one basis point to 2.07 percent as of 12:32 p.m. in Tokyo, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. The 2 percent note due in February 2022 declined 3/32, or 94 cents per $1,000 face amount, to 99 13/32. The yield was as low as 2.04 percent today, the least since March 13. It dropped 15 basis points last week, the most since the period ended Dec. 16. Japan’s 10-year rate declined 2 1/2 basis points, or 0.025 percentage point, to 0.960 percent. It has dropped for four days, the longest stretch since Feb. 29. The U.S. is scheduled to sell $32 billion of 3-year notes tomorrow, $21 billion of 10-year debt on April 11 and $13 billion of 30-year bonds on April 12. U.S. Recovery Growing sales and profits may give business leaders the confidence to take on staff at a faster clip than last month’s 120,000 gain in payrolls, according to analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. They say the data don’t signal a repeat of 2010 and 2011 -- when hiring was derailed after promising starts by concern about government debt, energy costs and natural disasters -- even though the total was weaker than all the estimates from 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The Federal Reserve is scheduled to sell as much as $1.5 billion of Treasury Inflation Protected Securities due from July 2012 to January 2015 today. It is replacing $400 billion of shorter-term debt in its holdings with longer maturities to hold down borrowing costs. China’s consumer prices rose 3.6 percent in March from a year earlier after gaining 3.2 percent in February, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website today. To contact the reporter on this story: Wes Goodman in Singapore at wgoodman@bloomberg.net; Kristine Aquino in Singapore at kaquino1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rocky Swift at rswift5@bloomberg.net

Source