By Saumya Vaishampayan, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Treasurys were flat on Thursday as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi gave a more sober view of the euro-zone recovery and U.S. weekly jobless claims dropped slightly to 366,000.
Yields on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note 10_YEAR -1.48% were flat at 1.96% in morning trading. Yields move inversely to prices and one basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point.
“Treasurys are probably taking more notice of what’s happening to German bund yields than to the initial claims data,” said Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak.
There is a greater expectation that the ECB is going to remain supportive, he said.
Yields on the 10-year German bund DE:10YR_GER -2.03% were flat at 1.63% and yields on the 5-year fell 5 basis points to 0.64%.
U.S. 30-year bond yields 30_YEAR -0.98% remained unchanged at 3.17% and yields on 5-year Treasury notes 5_YEAR -1.91% were also flat at 0.84%.
Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Federal Reserve, said on CNBC that he doesn’t think the unemployment rate will reach the Fed’s 6.5% goal until the middle of 2015.
U.S. stocks opened slightly lower on Thursday, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index SPX -0.66% , the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP -0.85% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.74% all down less than 0.5%.
Saumya Vaishampayan is a MarketWatch reporter based in New York.
