Treasury yields were largely unmoved early Tuesday as investors await clarity over an expected second round of peace talks due to take place between the U.S. and Iran.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note — the key benchmark for U.S. government borrowing — was flat at 4.254%.
The 2-year Treasury note yield, which more closely tracks short-term Federal Reserve interest rate policy, was more than 1 basis point higher at 3.735%. The longer-dated 30-year Treasury bond yield was down less than a basis point at 4.878%.
One basis point is equal to 0.01%, and yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Monday saw a spate of mixed messages from both administrations, as Iran held off committing to further negotiations amid threats of overwhelming military force from President Trump.
On Tuesday, Iranian state media reported shortly before 4:00 a.m. ET that no delegation had yet departed for planned peace talks in Islamabad.
“Trump, by imposing a siege and violating the ceasefire, seeks to turn this negotiating table— in his own imagination— into a table of surrender or to justify renewed warmongering,” Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a X post.
“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats, and in the past two weeks, we have prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield,” Ghalibaf, who is also Iran’s chief negotiator, added.
That followed Trump’s pronouncement that “lots of bombs [will] start going off” if no deal is reached before the shaky ceasefire expires.
Investors also face uncertainty over the exact expiration date of the ceasefire.
The two-week deal agreed between the U.S. and Iran was set to expire at 12:00 a.m. GMT (Tuesday, 08:00 p.m. ET), although U.S. President Donald Trump told Bloomberg on Monday that the truce would end “Wednesday evening Washington time.”
Elsewhere, traders will be monitoring Federal Reserve chair nominee Kevin Warsh’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday. In his prepared statement to the Senate Banking committee, released Monday, the former Fed governor said the U.S. central bank must be largely independent of political influence, while also staying focused on its primary goals.
“The Fed must stay in its lane,” he said. “Fed independence is placed at greatest risk when it strays into fiscal and social policies where it has neither authority nor expertise.”
— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Justina Lee also contributed to this report.
