Treasuries Close Roughly Flat Following Yesterday's Rally

(RTTNews) - Following the rally seen in the previous session, treasuries turned in a relatively lackluster performance during trading on Wednesday.

Bond price showed a positive bias for much of the session but ended the day little changed. As a result, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, edged down by less than a basis point to 2.296 percent.

The choppy trading on the day came amid lingering geopolitical uncertainty as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

On the U.S. economic front, the Labor Department released a report showing an unexpected decline in import prices in the month of March.

The Labor Department said import prices dipped by 0.2 percent in March after climbing by a revised 0.4 percent in February.

The decrease came as a surprise to economists, who had expected import prices to inch up by 0.1 percent compared to the 0.2 percent increase originally reported for the previous month.

Meanwhile, the report said export prices rose by 0.2 percent in March following a 0.3 percent increase in February. Export prices had been expected to tick up by 0.1 percent.

The economic calendar picks up in the coming days, including with the release of some key data while the markets are closed on Friday.

Reports on retail sales, producer and consumer prices, and import and export prices may attract attention later this week.

Traders largely shrugged off the results of the Treasury Department's auction of $12 billion worth of thirty-year bonds, which attracted below average demand.

The thirty-year bond auction drew a high yield of 2.938 percent and a bid-to-cover ratio of 2.23, while the ten previous thirty-year bond auctions had an average bid-to-cover ratio of 2.31.

Today's thirty-year bond auction came after the Treasury sold $24 billion worth of three-year notes on Monday and $20 billion worth of ten-year notes on Tuesday.