Overnight
The ten-year Treasury yield is 4.939%, back below 5%. Yesterday's brief had it at 5.02%. Inside one week this column has now written the same yield on both sides of that line — which is what a round trip means and all the desk can see. Who bought the note back, and why, is not on the desk's screen, and the desk will not invent it. Thursday's US cash session closed its firmest of the week: the S&P 500 at 7,637.76, up 1.14%; the Nasdaq at 26,418.30, up 1.69%. The ticker reads the yield's move at −1.61%.
Asia and Europe
Both finished Thursday before New York finished its own. Asia's was mixed: the Nikkei 225 at 64,136.03, up 0.33%, against the Hang Seng at 24,604.30, down 0.44%. Europe's was firmer and broader: the DAX at 25,716.71, up 0.70%; the FTSE 100 at 10,816.14, up 1.19%. Tokyo and Hong Kong reopen this morning to price a session Asia has not yet traded against.
FX, rates and commodities
The dollar is firmer across the board. The yen sits at 155.69 to the dollar, softer by 0.45% on the ticker's reading; USD/HKD is 7.8452; EUR/USD is 1.1481, down 0.50%; sterling is 1.3376, down 0.79%. The week's real motion stays in commodities. WTI is US$96.61 — under US$100 for the first time in this stretch, against around US$102 yesterday and around US$105 at the start of the week. Gold is US$4,346.20, recovered from around US$4,263. The ticker carries no percentage change for either, so the desk quotes the levels and nothing more. Crypto is firmer: bitcoin 76,431, up 0.9%; ether 2,446.33, up 2.09%.
The day ahead
The round trip says less than it looks. A yield that touches 5% and retreats says nothing about where it settles; it shows only that the line is being traded, not held. The question has changed direction with it: yesterday's was whether 5% acts as a floor, today's whether it acts as a ceiling. Trading answers that, not the desk. Asia prices it first; London and New York overwrite.
One number
4.939% — the ten-year Treasury yield, back below 5%, against 5.02% in yesterday's brief. Two crossings in a week is not a trend, and the desk will not call it one. It is, though, the week's one real event: the market reached the number it had argued about all week, and did not stay there.
One read
Our markets desk's Southbound flows: HK$1 trillion traded, HK$33 billion net bought reads HKEX's own daily files and draws the distinction the headline invites: the gross figure is turnover, the net is conviction, and eleven of twelve sessions finished net buy with a residue that keeps thinning. The level is what happened, not what it means. What would change the character of that flow is a run of sessions, not one Friday — and the files that answer it are dull ones.
