U.S. Treasuries divided ahead of September employment report, Fed Chair Powell’s speech

The U.S. Treasuries remained divided during Friday’s afternoon session ahead of the country’s employment report for the month of September, scheduled to be released today by 12:30GMT.

In addition, a host of speeches by members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), namely, Rosengren, Bostic, George, Clarida and Quarles, due to be delivered later through the day shall add further direction to the debt market.

However, of utmost importance, will be the speech from FOMC Chair Jerome Powell, at 18:00GMT, for detailed insight into the debt market.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield slipped 1 basis point to 1.526 percent, the super-long 30-year bond yield lost 1-1/2 basis point to 2.023 percent while the yield on the short-term 2-year edged nearly 1 basis point higher to 1.394 percent by 12:00GMT.

Global markets, especially US equities, have become more sensitive to the economic data this week. The market is becoming more worried that the trade war between the US and China is starting to take far more of a toll on the global economy, Lloyds Bank reported.

While manufacturing PMIs have been under pressure for a while, the services sector is also starting to show erosion in confidence, both US ISMs this week coming in much weaker than expected, seeing US equities and yields fall with US interest rate markets now almost fully discounting another 25bps cut by the Fed at the end of this month, the report added.

Market sentiment on risk assets remains cautious ahead of today’s US employment report while the WTO cut its forecast for global trade growth from 2.6 percent to 1.2 percent in 2019 and from 3.0 percent to 2.7 percent in 2020, Eurobank Economic Analysis & Financial Markets Research reported.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Futures remained tad -0.36 percent down at 2,901.38 by 12:05GMT.