US Treasury yield curve

The yield curve plots the yield of US Treasury securities against their maturity, from the one-month bill to the thirty-year bond. Treasuries are the benchmark that other dollar interest rates are priced against, so the curve summarizes what the market expects from the Federal Reserve, from growth and from inflation, and how much extra yield investors demand to lend for longer.

Traders follow it because the Treasury yield is the risk-free alternative to every other asset. When yields rise, holding an asset that pays no interest, such as a stock without a dividend or Bitcoin, costs more in forgone return. When the shape of the curve changes quickly, it often reflects a change in what markets expect the Fed to do.

A normal curve slopes upward: longer maturities yield more than shorter ones, and the spread between the long and the short end is positive. A flat curve, with a spread close to zero, means the market sees little difference between rates today and rates later. An inverted curve slopes downward: short maturities yield more than long ones and the spread is negative. That happens when investors expect the Fed to cut rates later, often because they expect growth to slow.

This page tracks three spreads, always the longer yield minus the shorter one, in basis points (one basis point is 0.01 percentage point). 10Y - 2Y, known as 2s10s, is the most quoted gauge of the slope. 10Y - 3M is the spread the New York Fed uses in its recession probability model. 30Y - 5Y shows how steep the long end is.

Inversion is a warning light, not a timer. The New York Fed notes that an inversion of the 10-year minus 3-month spread has preceded every US recession since 1960, but that no theory establishes a clear connection between the two, that very low positive spreads have also occurred without a recession, and that the time between an inversion and a recession varies.

The numbers are the Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Treasury fits a par yield curve with the monotone convex method to indicative, bid-side market quotations for the most recently auctioned bills, notes and bonds, which the Federal Reserve Bank of New York collects at or near 3:30 PM Eastern Time each trading day. They are quotations, not transaction prices.

The rates are usually available by 6:00 PM Eastern Time on the same trading day, but can be delayed, so the latest day is the latest one the Treasury has published. Weekends and federal holidays have no rates. This page keeps a copy of the Treasury files and refreshes the files of the current and the previous year every 15 minutes.