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Morning Edition · Friday, September 25, 2026Published at 8:54 AM EDT · New York
US 30-Year Yield Reaches Highest Level Since 2004 as the Global Bond Selloff Widens
The 10-year Treasury note traded near 5.17% and Japan's 10-year yield hit 3.06%, yet volatility in equities and bitcoin stayed close to its lows for the year.
The repricing of long-dated government debt continued on Friday. The 30-year US Treasury bond yield was close to flat at 5.463% after reaching levels last seen in 2004, and the 10-year note held near 5.17%, just below Thursday's high, the strongest reading since June 2007. The move is not confined to Washington. Japan's 10-year government bond yield rose to 3.06%, a level last seen in 1996, with the 30-year at 4.12%, while gilts and eurozone paper sold off in the same direction.
The trigger was the return of tightening expectations. The Federal Open Market Committee raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75% to 4.00% on September 16, the first increase since 2023, and futures now imply a policy rate near 4.3% by December. Strong US private-sector activity data and a poorly received five-year note auction extended the selloff.
What is unusual is where the stress is showing up. CoinDesk notes that Treasury volatility is at its highest since March while the equity and bitcoin volatility gauges sit near their lows for the year. Israeli financial daily Globes reported that European equities opened slightly higher on Friday and that Barclays strategists listed three reasons to stay invested in stocks despite the jump in yields. Markets in China and South Korea were closed for holidays.
Two decades of credit expansion left governments with debt stocks that must now be refinanced at prices set by buyers rather than by central banks. Hard assets have not provided a uniform hedge. Gold futures opened at $4,309.50 an ounce on Friday, up 0.3% on the day but well below the January record of $5,589.38.
Part of a tracked trend
The Long-End Revolt
Governments will keep reaching for balance-sheet tools to suppress long-term yields, and bond markets will keep repricing duration higher anyway, so each intervention transfers demand into scarce assets instead of lowering borrowing costs.
What this means
The mechanism is term premium, not policy rates: investors are demanding more compensation to hold long duration as issuance grows and inflation expectations stay unanchored. The exposed parties are leveraged holders of duration, meaning banks, insurers and pension funds, along with governments facing higher refinancing costs and mortgage borrowers priced off the long end. Japanese institutions matter here too, because higher domestic yields reduce their need to buy foreign bonds, which removes a marginal buyer from Treasuries. The 2022 gilt episode is the documented precedent: an official rescue stabilised prices briefly and yields resumed rising once the buying stopped. The likelier outcome over the coming months is more balance-sheet management, meaning shorter issuance, buybacks and regulatory nudges toward captive domestic buyers, with long yields still higher at the end of it. That read would be wrong if US inflation data cool enough for the Federal Reserve to signal that the hiking cycle has ended, which would let the long end rally without intervention.
What to watch
- The composition of upcoming US Treasury auctions, because a shift toward shorter maturities would show the government is managing around weak demand for long bonds rather than meeting it.
- Whether equity and bitcoin volatility start to converge upward toward bond volatility, which would indicate the rates move is being treated as a broader repricing rather than a bond-market problem.
- Japanese life insurers' allocation decisions, since a decisive move toward domestic bonds at 4% on the 30-year removes a long-standing source of demand for US and European debt.
Observations to monitor, not financial advice.
Synthesized from: CoinDesk · Globes (Hebrew) · CNBC · Bloomberg
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