(RTTNews) - After ending last Friday's trading roughly flat, treasuries moved to the upside during the first session of the week on Monday.
Bond prices advanced early in the session and remained in positive territory throughout the day. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, fell 2.0 basis points to 4.116 percent.
The strength among treasuries may have reflected lingering optimism about the outlook for interest rates ahead of the release of the minutes of the Federal Reserve's latest monetary policy meeting on Tuesday.
The minutes of the Fed's December meeting, when the central bank decided to lower interest rates by another quarter point, may provide further insight about officials' divergent views about the likelihood of further rates in the new year.
While the Fed is widely expected to leave interest rates at its next meeting in late January, rates are expected to be at least another quarter point lower by the end of 2026, according to CME Group's FedWatch Tool.
Meanwhile, traders largely shrugged off a from the National Association of Realtors showing pending home sales in the U.S. shot up by much more than expected in the month of November.
NAR said its pending home sales index spiked by 3.3 percent to 79.2 in November after surging by 2.4 percent to an upwardly revised 76.7 in October.
Economists had expected pending home sales to climb by 0.8 percent compared to the 1.9 percent jump originally reported for the previous month.
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