Know your bonds: A quick guide to Treasuries

If you find yourself getting lost (or bored) by bond market news, we hear you. No one is born understanding what a yield curve is, and even financial experts sometimes struggle to articulate the goings-on of the cryptic $160 trillion market.

But when this normally sleepy corner of Wall Street starts rumbling, as it has been recently, everyone — even if you’ve never invested a dime — is affected. So here’s a quick primer on government bonds (we’ll save corporate bonds for another day) and what they mean for you.

Governments around the world rely on borrowed money to keep the lights on. Rather than using a credit card or asking the bank for a loan, the US and other nations issue a variety of bonds, which are essentially IOUs. Investors lend the government money for a set period of time, and, in return, the government pays them interest on that loan.

In the US, those bonds are called Treasuries (after the department that issues them) and they make up some $30 trillion of the $160 trillion global bond market. Other major players include the UK, which issues “gilts,” so called because the Bank of England’s 17th-century debt was issued in the form of a gilded-edge paper certificate. Germany has its bunds, France has its OATs ( obligations assimilables du Trésor ) and Japan’s government bonds are known in English as simply JGBs.

Different names, same concept: Lend the government money, it’ll pay you back, with interest.

In normal times, government bonds are a relatively boring market, without the stomach-churning meme-inflected swings of the stock market or the speculative chaos of crypto. But in abnormal times, bond traders are known to signal their anxiety by pushing yields higher — in other words, demanding more interest for taking on what they perceive to be an increased risk of lending governments money.

Daniel Heuer/Reuters

That’s what’s been happening since about mid-May. Persistent concerns about high levels of government debt — the US is now sitting on $40 trillion , having doubled over the past decade — have collided with renewed worries about inflation, the war in Iran and the prospect of central banks raising interest rates.

For consumers, rising bond yields can be a mixed bag, raising the cost of all kinds of consumer debt, like mortgages, credit cards and car loans. But it can also be good news for folks who having savings to invest long term, as higher yields make buying bonds cheaper while locking in a higher rate of return.

The Treasury Department has sought to calm the market by increasing its regular buyback program to $6 billion, though the move has so far been met with disappointment from investors. On Wednesday, yields continued climbing to multi-year highs even after the Treasury said it would roughly triple the size of its buyback operation this month from $2 billion last month.

The Treasury issues all kinds of debt, from short-term bills to 30-year bonds, with maturities ranging from a few weeks to 30 years. Within that menu, there are three benchmarks — the 10-year, 30-year, and 2-year, in order of importance — that wind up dominating headlines.

If you only pay attention to one part of the bond market, make it the 10-year Treasury yield.

The 10-year Treasury note is among the safest places on the planet to park your money, so lots of people do, banking on the “full faith and credit” of the US government to pay them interest every six months and return the principal a decade later.

The yield (or return) investors demand functions as a kind of looking glass into the global economy, signaling market expectations around inflation and economic growth. It also helps set the baseline for all kinds of consumer debt, including mortgages and car loans.

When the 10-year yield goes up, so does the cost of financing a house or car. The 10-year yield is not the only factor in determining the interest rate on those loans. But it plays a big role. (The reason 30-year mortgage rates tend to move with the 10-year Treasury is because most people move or refinance after about a decade.)

“The 10-year is the most closely watched because it’s sort of in that sweet spot where it’s far enough to capture most of the long-term borrowing, and yet it’s still sufficiently sensitive to the movements in the macro economy,” Nikolai Roussanov, finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told CNN.

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

This is the longest-dated Treasury and, like the 10-year, it is a bellwether for long-term borrowing costs. The two generally move in sync. But the 30-year yield serves as a gauge of investors’ expectations for inflation and other economic risks over the longer term.

Another way to think about it: Say you lend someone $1,000 today knowing it will take them 30 years to pay you back. That $1,000 won’t be worth as much to you in 30 years as it is today, thanks to inflation. To make it worth your while, you’ll charge them an interest rate that you expect will keep up with inflation.

Similarly, if the person you’re lending to isn’t super trustworthy, you might demand an even higher return, aka a higher yield, in exchange for taking on the risk that they can’t or won’t pay you back.

Right now, the 30-year yield is hovering around 5.2%, up from 1.7% in 2021, and its highest level since 2007, just before the Great Financial Crisis.

That doesn’t mean investors broadly expect the US to default, but it does mean the government is forced to divert more revenue (read: tax dollars) to pay for that debt. And that’s what’s keeping many economists up at night.

“The yields, at the levels that they are now, are not by themselves that scary,” Roussanov says, noting that bond yields were even higher in the 90s and early 2000s. “It’s the fact that we’re spending so much on interest.”

The US now spends more of its federal budget on interest payments than it does on national defense, raising concerns about a “doom loop” in which the US is forced to borrow more money by issuing more debt.

This is a virtually risk-free short-term note. There are two main reasons to pay attention to the 2-year: 1. It signals the market’s expectations for what the Federal Reserve will do with short-term interest rates, and 2. It may, when viewed alongside the 10-year, have recession-prediction powers.

The latter point refers to the “inverted yield curve,” which tends to send investors into panic mode. It isn’t a perfect recession indicator, but has an impressive track record. An inversion of the 2-year and 10-year yields has preceded every major downturn of the past 60 years. (It has also had a few false positives, like in 2022 when a recession seemed inevitable but never arrived.)

A yield curve is just a visual representation of the normal behavior of a bond’s return (or yield) over time. A 10-year note almost always delivers a higher rate of return than shorter-term notes. That’s because the longer your money is locked up, the greater risk you’re taking on and the more compensation you demand. Every now and then, though, the return on a 10-year note falls below that of the 2-year, creating an inverted yield curve and signaling that investors are more worried about the economy’s performance in the immediate future than they are about the long term.

如果你发现自己被债券市场新闻搞得晕头转向（或者感到无聊），我们完全理解。没有人天生就明白收益率曲线是什么，即使是金融专家有时也难以解释这个规模达160万亿美元的神秘市场的运作机制。

但当华尔街这个通常平静的角落开始动荡时（就像最近这样），每个人——即使你从未投资过一分钱——都会受到影响。所以，这里简要介绍一下政府债券​​（我们改天再谈公司债券）以及它们对你的意义。

世界各国政府都依赖借贷来维持运转。美国和其他国家并不使用信用卡或向银行贷款，而是发行各种债券，这些债券本质上是借据。投资者借钱给政府，期限固定，作为回报，政府向他们支付利息。

在美国，这些债券被称为国债（以发行国债的部门命名），约占全球160万亿美元债券市场总额的30万亿美元。其他主要参与者包括英国，其发行的债券被称为“金边债券”（gilts），之所以这样称呼，是因为英格兰银行在17世纪发行的债务是以镀金纸质凭证的形式出现的。德国有德国国债（bunds），法国有法国国债（OATs，即“国债同化债券”），而日本政府债券在英语中简称为JGBs。

不同的名字，相同的概念：借钱给政府，它会连本带利地偿还你。

正常情况下，政府债券市场相对平静，既没有股市那种令人心惊胆战、受网络迷因影响的剧烈波动，也没有加密货币市场的投机混乱。但在非常时期，债券交易员往往会通过推高收益率来表达他们的焦虑——换句话说，他们会因为承担了他们认为更高的借贷风险而要求更高的利息。

丹尼尔·休尔/路透社

这种情况从五月中旬左右就开始出现了。人们持续担忧政府债务水平过高——美国目前的债务高达40万亿美元，在过去十年中翻了一番——与此同时，人们又开始担忧通货膨胀、伊朗战争以及各国央行可能提高利率等问题。

对消费者而言，债券收益率上升可谓喜忧参半，它会推高各类消费债务的成本，例如抵押贷款、信用卡和汽车贷款。但对于那些拥有储蓄用于长期投资的人来说，这或许也是个好消息，因为更高的收益率意味着购买债券的成本更低，同时还能锁定更高的回报率。

美国财政部试图通过将常规股票回购计划规模扩大至60亿美元来稳定市场，但此举迄今并未获得投资者的认可。周三，尽管财政部宣布本月将把回购规模从上月的20亿美元扩大近三倍，但收益率仍继续攀升至多年高位。

财政部发行各种类型的债务，从短期国库券到30年期国债，期限从几周到30年不等。在这些债务中，有三个基准期限——10年期、30年期和2年期（按重要性排序）——最终占据了新闻头条。

如果你只能关注债券市场的一部分，那就关注10年期国债收益率。

10 年期美国国债是地球上最安全的资金存放地之一，因此很多人都选择投资，他们相信美国政府的“全部信誉”会每六个月支付利息，并在十年后返还本金。

投资者要求的收益率（或回报）就像一面镜子，映照着全球经济的运行状况，反映着市场对通胀和经济增长的预期。它还有助于设定各类消费债务（包括抵押贷款和汽车贷款）的基准线。

当10年期国债收益率上升时，房屋或汽车贷款的成本也会上升。10年期国债收益率并非决定这些贷款利率的唯一因素，但它起着至关重要的作用。（30年期抵押贷款利率往往与10年期国债收益率同步变动的原因是，大多数人会在大约十年后搬家或进行再融资。）

宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院金融学教授尼古拉·鲁萨诺夫告诉 CNN：“10 年期国债是最受关注的，因为它处于一个最佳位置，既足以反映大部分长期借贷，又对宏观经济的波动足够敏感。”

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

这是期限最长的美国国债，与10年期国债一样，是长期借贷成本的风向标。两者通常走势一致。但30年期国债收益率可以衡量投资者对长期通胀和其他经济风险的预期。

换个角度想：假设你今天借给别人1000美元，你知道他们需要30年才能还清。由于通货膨胀，30年后这1000美元的价值肯定不如今天。为了让这笔借款对你有利，你会收取一个你预期能够跟上通货膨胀的利率。

同样地，如果你借钱给的人不太值得信任，你可能会要求更高的回报，也就是更高的收益率，以换取承担他们无法或不愿偿还贷款的风险。

目前，30 年期国债收益率徘徊在 5.2% 左右，高于 2021 年的 1.7%，是自 2007 年金融危机爆发前夕以来的最高水平。

这并不意味着投资者普遍预期美国会违约，但确实意味着政府将被迫挪用更多收入（即税款）来偿还债务。而这正是令许多经济学家夜不能寐的原因。

鲁萨诺夫表示：“目前的收益率本身并不算太可怕。”他指出，上世纪90年代和本世纪初的债券收益率甚至更高。“真正可怕的是我们支付了太多利息。”

美国现在用于支付利息的联邦预算比用于国防的支出还要多，这引发了人们对“恶性循环”的担忧，即美国将被迫通过发行更多债务来借入更多资金。

这是一张几乎没有风险的短期债券。关注2年期国债主要有两个原因：1. 它反映了市场对美联储短期利率政策走向的预期；2. 与10年期国债相比，它可能具有预测经济衰退的能力。

后一点指的是“收益率曲线倒挂”，这往往会引发投资者恐慌。它并非完美的衰退指标，但其过往记录却令人印象深刻。过去60年中，每一次重大经济衰退之前，2年期和10年期国债收益率都出现了倒挂。（当然，它也出现过一些误报，例如2022年，当时经济衰退似乎不可避免，但最终并未发生。）

收益率曲线只是债券收益（或收益率）随时间变化的正常走势的直观表现。10年期债券的收益率几乎总是高于短期债券。这是因为资金锁定时间越长，承担的风险就越大，因此投资者要求的回报也就越高。然而，有时10年期债券的收益率会低于2年期债券，形成收益率曲线倒挂，这表明投资者更担心经济的短期表现，而非长期前景。