U.S. Treasuries gain ahead of weekly initial jobless claims, FOMC member Kaplan’s speech

The U.S. Treasuries gained during Thursday’s afternoon session ahead of the country’s weekly initial jobless claims, scheduled to be released today by 13:30GMT, besides, FOMC member Kaplan’s speech, also due today by 14:15GMT.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield slipped nearly 1 basis point to 1.642 percent, the super-long 30-year bond yield suffered 1-1/2 basis points to 2.117 percent and the yield on the short-term 2-year lost 1/2 basis point to trade at 1.437 percent by 13:20GMT.

Asian financial markets continued to shrug off concerns about the coronavirus today, with sentiment also supported by the announcement by the Chinese authorities confirming plans to cut tariffs on a range of goods imported from the US, Daiwa Capital Markets reported.

While that announcement might have been aimed at supporting sentiment and easing somewhat the supply-side hit impact of the epidemic, it is also simply likely to be satisfying the commitments made in the first-phase trade agreement (e.g. among other things, tariffs on US crude will fall from 5 percent to 22.5 percent, while those on soybeans will fall 2.5ppts to 27.5), the report added.

Of course, it will also still leave more than half of all US exports to China subject to tariffs and an elevated average tariff more than double the 8.0 percent rate that prevailed before the trade war, Daiwa further noted in the report.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 Futures remained tad 0.39 percent higher at 3,347.88 by 13:25GMT.