Stock and government bond prices rallied on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve acknowledged improvements in the US economy at its latest meeting while opting to keep its current policy stance unchanged.
The yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond, which moves inversely to the price of the benchmark government debt instrument and is sensitive to signals about the future of the Fed’s $120bn-a-month of pandemic-era bond purchases, eased following the meeting to trade 0.01 percentage points lower for the day at 1.23 per cent.
The yield has tumbled from close to 1.8 per cent in March as traders bet on the Fed sustaining its purchases despite the US economy’s strong rebound from a historic contraction in the second quarter of 2020.