10-Year Treasury Yield

This chart plots the 10-year Treasury constant maturity rate as a daily close over the last three years, from the FRED series named under the chart. It is the rate the US government pays to borrow for ten years — and because that borrower cannot print its way into default in its own currency, it is treated as the risk-free anchor off which every other rate and every asset price is set. The page refreshes hourly and shows the current yield with the trailing 90-day change.

A rising yield tightens everything at once: mortgages and corporate borrowing cost more, and the discount rate applied to future earnings rises, which mechanically presses on stock valuations — longest-duration growth stocks first. A falling yield eases all of that, but it falls for two very different reasons: inflation cooling, which is friendly, or money fleeing into safety, which usually is not.

The 10-year is set by the market, not the Federal Reserve. The Fed steers the overnight rate; the 10-year prices what the market expects for growth, inflation and issuance across the next decade. That is what makes it worth watching on its own — it can rise while the Fed cuts, when the market is pricing inflation or supply rather than policy.

The caveats: a single maturity is one point on a curve — the shape of the whole curve, and especially its inversions, carries information this line cannot, which is what the yield-curve page tracks. The series is a daily market close and gaps on weekends and holidays. And a yield is not a forecast: it is a price, with everything buyers and sellers know already inside it.