How is it going? Ten-year yields are up relative to Friday. Indeed, after initial progress in lowering long rates, pretty much the entire yield curve is now up.

The reference here is the Treasury Department's program of regular buybacks of older, off-the-run securities, which began in 2024 with the stated aim of improving liquidity in the secondary Treasury market. Observers have also watched the program for any effect on longer-maturity yields, since purchases concentrated in longer-dated issues could, all else equal, add demand where supply pressure has been heaviest. The early movement lower in long rates suggested some progress on that front; the latest readings show that gain has largely been given back across maturities.

Figure 1: Yield curve as of 8/18 (blue), as of 8/19 (orange), as of 8/28 (green), all in %. Source: Treasury.

Yields across the curve reflect many influences beyond buyback operations, including expectations for Federal Reserve policy, incoming economic data, and the pace of Treasury issuance, so week-to-week shifts such as this one are hard to attribute to any single factor. The pattern nonetheless illustrates the scale of the challenge: moving the term structure of rates durably is difficult when other forces push in the opposite direction. Subsequent buyback operation results and future yield-curve snapshots will indicate whether the earlier progress on long rates re-emerges.