Wednesday was unusual in that the FOMC minutes from the March 19-20 meeting were released much earlier than expected. We could not help but wonder how that might impact the $21 billion ten-year Treasury Note auction today. The outcome seems to be mixed, and maybe immaterial if you are just watching stocks. The bid-to-cover ratio of 2.79 was slightly under the average, but the tendered amount was for over $58.6 billion. The auction went off at 1.795% for the 2.00% coupon based upon its price of $101.839.

Indirect bidders (foreign demand) were more active than normal with 37.3% of the auction. Banks and investment funds make up the direct bidders and their 29.1% of the auction was much larger than normal.

We currently show the 10-year Treasury yield at 1.78% and the 30-year Treasury yield looks to be 2.98%. The big issue remains that stocks are in a serious bull market. Bonds might not even matter right now, even if you consider that rates could rise handily ahead. We have the S&P up 1.2% at 1,588 and the DJIA up 0.9% at 14,810 at all time highs.

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