Today’s Treasury bond rates

What the number above means

The figure at the top of this page is the current yield on a long-term US Treasury bond — the annual return the market is demanding to lend money to the US government for the longest terms it offers, 20 and 30 years. It comes from the Treasury’s official daily par yield curve, so it reflects the most recent business-day close rather than a live trading tick. Think of it as the price of borrowing at the very far end of the maturity ladder: when this yield is high, the market wants more compensation to tie money up for three decades; when it’s low, it will accept less.

What makes this number worth watching is what it represents. Because the money is committed for so long, the long-bond yield is the market’s distilled judgment about where inflation and growth are headed over an entire generation, not just the next meeting or the next quarter. The “today” change beside the yield shows the latest daily move, and following it over weeks tells you whether the long-run mood is tightening or easing. Whatever today’s 30-year yield happens to be, treat it as a signal about the long horizon rather than a forecast of next month.

It’s worth knowing that the 20-year and 30-year yields, while close, are not identical. The 30-year is the classic “long bond” and the one most people mean when they talk about long Treasuries; the 20-year was reintroduced more recently and sometimes trades a touch differently because fewer investors focus on it. Both live at the far end of the maturity ladder and both carry the same long-run signal, so for the big picture you can read them together — the yield above stands in for the long end as a whole, and when it moves, the message is about where the market thinks rates, inflation and growth are heading over the span of decades rather than days.

What a Treasury bond actually is

A Treasury bond is a loan you make to the US federal government for a long, fixed term. Treasury bonds are the longest-dated debt the government issues, sold in 20-year and 30-year maturities. In exchange for your money, the Treasury pays you a fixed coupon every six months for the full life of the bond, and then returns the bond’s face value in full on the maturity date. Buy a 30-year bond and you’ve locked in a known stream of interest payments stretching out three decades, capped by the return of your principal at the end.

That fixed coupon is the defining feature. It never changes once the bond is issued, which is exactly why long bonds are prized by anyone who wants certain, dependable income far into the future — and also why they behave the way they do when rates move. The interest is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government, widely treated as the closest thing to a risk-free promise in global finance, so the question with a long bond is rarely whether you’ll be paid. It’s what that fixed stream will be worth as the world changes around it.

How bonds differ from notes and bills

Treasuries all come from the same borrower; what separates them is time. Treasury bills are the short end — maturities of a year or less — and they pay no coupon at all; you buy them at a discount and collect face value at maturity. Treasury notes occupy the middle, from two to ten years, paying a fixed coupon twice a year. Treasury bonds are the long end, at 20 and 30 years, also paying a semi-annual coupon but for a far longer stretch. Line all three up and you get the maturity ladder that runs from a few weeks out to three decades.

Plot the yield of every maturity from bills through notes to bonds and you’ve drawn the Treasury yield curve — one of the most closely read pictures in all of finance. Normally longer maturities yield more than shorter ones, because lenders want extra compensation for the added time and uncertainty, which is why the long bond usually sits at or near the top of the curve. When that relationship flips and short rates rise above long ones, the curve “inverts,” a pattern that has often preceded recessions. The long bond is the anchor at the far right of that curve, and the yield above is its current level.

The practical takeaway from the ladder is that maturity is a dial you can turn to match your own horizon. If you’ll need the money soon, bills keep you at the safe, low-swing end; if you’re parking cash for a few years, notes sit in the middle; and if you truly have a decades-long horizon and want to fix a yield for the long haul, bonds are the tool for it. Moving out along that ladder trades more price stability for more yield and more sensitivity to rate moves. Seeing the bill, note and bond yields side by side is the quickest way to judge whether the market is paying you enough extra to commit for longer — the essence of what the yield curve is telling you.

What moves the long bond

The single biggest driver of the long bond is long-run expectations for inflation and growth. Lenders committing money for 30 years won’t accept a yield that inflation is likely to erode over that span, so when the market expects persistently higher inflation or stronger growth, long yields rise; when it expects inflation to stay tame or growth to slow, they fall. This is a judgment about the whole horizon, which is why the long bond can move on shifts in the economic outlook that have nothing to do with this month’s data.

A second force is the term premium — the extra yield investors demand simply for the risk of locking money away for so long, when so much can change. When buyers are confident and hungry for safe long-term income, the term premium shrinks and long yields drift down; when they’re nervous about the fiscal outlook, the supply of new bonds, or the uncertainty of the distant future, they demand more and long yields climb. Crucially, the Federal Reserve influences the long bond only indirectly. The Fed sets the overnight rate, which dominates the short end of the curve, but the long bond is the least sensitive maturity to those overnight moves and the most sensitive to the long-term outlook. That’s why the 30-year yield can rise even as the Fed cuts, or fall while the Fed holds — it’s pricing the next thirty years, not the next meeting.

Two more forces round out the picture. One is supply: the government funds its deficits by issuing bonds, and when it needs to sell a lot of long-dated debt, the extra supply can push long yields up unless buyers step in to soak it up. The other is demand from big, price-insensitive buyers — foreign central banks, pension funds and insurers who buy long Treasuries for reasons other than chasing the best yield. When that demand is strong, it holds long yields down; when those buyers pull back, yields have to rise to attract replacements. None of these forces work in isolation, which is why the long bond can seem to defy the Fed and the headlines: at any moment its yield is the net result of the inflation outlook, the term premium, the pace of new issuance and the appetite of the world’s largest savers all at once.

Interest-rate risk and duration, explained plainly

The most important thing to understand about long bonds is that their price and their yield move in opposite directions, and long bonds swing the hardest of all. Say you own a 30-year bond with a fixed 4% coupon and market yields then climb to 5%. New buyers can get 5% on a fresh bond, so no one will pay full price for your 4% bond — its market price falls until its effective yield matches the new 5%. Because your bond is locked into that lower coupon for decades, the price has to drop a long way to close the gap. That’s interest-rate risk, and the measure of it is duration: the longer the maturity, the higher the duration, and the bigger the price swing for a given change in yields.

This is why long bonds have the highest interest-rate risk of any Treasury. It cuts both ways, and that symmetry is the whole point. If you lock in a high yield today and rates then fall, the market price of your long bond soars — you’re holding an above-market coupon everyone else now wants, and you can sell at a premium or simply enjoy the rich income. But if rates rise after you buy and you’re forced to sell before maturity, you’ll take the largest loss of any maturity on the ladder. Hold to maturity and you still get your face value back and every coupon along the way; the price swings only bite if you have to sell in the meantime. Long bonds reward a correct call on falling rates and punish being forced out after rates rise.

Who buys long bonds and why

The classic buyers of 30-year Treasuries are pension funds and insurers — institutions with liabilities that stretch decades into the future. A pension that owes retirees payments 30 years from now can match that obligation almost exactly by holding a 30-year bond that pays out over the same horizon, removing the risk that its funding falls short. This liability matching is why the 30-year yield is watched so intently by anyone managing very long-dated promises: it sets the terms on which those future obligations can be locked down today.

Individual investors buy long bonds for two main reasons. The first is to lock in a yield: if you believe rates are near a peak and likely to fall, a long bond fixes today’s income for 30 years and stands to gain in price if you’re right. The second is portfolio ballast. High-quality government bonds often hold or gain value when riskier assets fall, so a slug of Treasuries can steady a portfolio through turbulence. The trade-off is the interest-rate risk above — the same duration that makes long bonds rally when yields drop makes them fall hardest when yields rise — so how much long-bond exposure fits depends on your time horizon and your tolerance for that price swing.

One caution belongs alongside the appeal. Because the coupon on a plain Treasury bond is fixed, it offers no built-in protection against inflation: if prices rise faster than expected over the decades you hold it, the real, spending-power value of those fixed payments shrinks. That’s the flip side of locking in a yield — you get certainty in dollars, not certainty in purchasing power. Investors who want the long horizon but worry about inflation eating the coupon often pair or replace long bonds with inflation-linked Treasuries, whose payments adjust with the price level. Which mix is right is a personal call that depends on your goals, your other holdings and your read on inflation over the life of the bond.

Related tools and guides

This page is the live long-bond yield and the context around it; the rest of the rates board fills in the picture. Compare the short and middle of the ladder with the Treasury bill and Treasury note pages, see how the whole shape fits together in the Treasury yield curve study, and check the federal funds rate to see the overnight rate that anchors the short end but only indirectly touches the long bond. Reading the long bond alongside those neighbors is the fastest way to understand not just where rates are today but what the market believes about the years ahead. For everything in one place, visit the today’s rates board. This page is general information, not financial advice.