Treasury Yields Push Higher Ahead of Buyback Announcement -- WSJ

By Sam Goldfarb

With Treasury yields hovering near multiyear highs, bond investors are eagerly anticipating tomorrow's announcement about the size of this week's buyback operation.

Faced with rising yields, the Treasury Department announced last month that it would at least double buybacks of longer-term bonds. Those buyback operations had already been previously scheduled, and the first one since last month's announcement-specifically focused on 10-year to 20-year Treasurys-will take place Thursday from 1:40 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET.

The big news, though, could come a day earlier, on Wednesday at 11 a.m., when the Treasury Department indicates exactly how much it plans to buy. Recently, it has been buying a maximum of $2 billion of longer-term Treasurys per operation, so a maximum of $4 billion is the least that is expected.

-- Analysts at RBC Capital Markets wrote in a note Tuesday that $4 billion would likely be seen as disappointing to investors, potentially spurring an uptick in longer-term yields. Their base case is $5 billion to $6 billion.

-- Anything above that could drag on longer-term yields; purchasing more than $8 billion could be difficult unless the Treasury Department relaxes its guidelines about buying at prevailing market prices, they wrote.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 08, 2026 14:49 ET (18:49 GMT)