10-Year Treasury Yield
The 10-year Treasury yield is the interest rate the U.S. government pays to borrow for a decade. It is the benchmark every other long-term rate is priced against, from mortgages to corporate bonds to the discount rate in an equity model.
History
What the number represents
Treasury publishes constant-maturity yields each business day, derived from the secondary market for outstanding notes. The 10-year point is not a single security: it is fitted from the prices of notes maturing in roughly nine to eleven years, so the series stays continuous even as individual bonds age out.
A yield is not a return you can lock in unless you hold to maturity. If rates rise after you buy, the bond's price falls and the yield on new purchases rises with it. That is why the same number can feel like a gain to a saver and a loss to an existing holder.
Why the yield moves
A long yield is the average of expected short-term rates over ten years plus a term premium for holding duration. Expectations move on inflation, Fed communication and growth data; the term premium moves on uncertainty and on how much duration the market has to absorb.
Supply matters more than it used to. When the Treasury issues heavily into a market that is not adding duration, the clearing yield rises even without any change in the inflation outlook. That is a price effect, not a signal about the economy, and it is one reason to read the yield alongside the curve rather than on its own.
What it does to other assets
Mortgage rates track the 10-year closely, because a thirty-year mortgage is effectively a long bond with prepayment risk. Corporate spreads are quoted over it. Equity valuations are sensitive to it through the discount rate: a move from 2% to 5% cuts the present value of distant cash flows by a third.
The relationship is not mechanical. Equities can rise with yields when the move is driven by growth, and fall when it is driven by inflation or by a repricing of term premium. What matters is which of the two is doing the work.
How this reading is calculated
We pull DGS10 from FRED, apply the transform shown above, and keep every observation the source publishes. Missing dates are dropped rather than filled, so holidays leave gaps instead of fake zeroes. The percentile is the share of observations since 1962 that sit below today's value.
The file is rebuilt daily. Derived series are computed by us from public-domain inputs and the formula is stated on this page, so anyone can reproduce the number from the original release.
How to read the percentile
The percentile compares today's reading with the indicator's own history, not with other indicators. A 20th percentile on this page means the current reading is lower than four fifths of all observations since 1962; it says nothing about whether that is good or bad for markets.
Extremes are the useful part. A reading above the 90th or below the 10th percentile is unusual enough to be worth explaining, and unusual readings tend to mean-revert. The middle of the distribution is mostly noise.
What is free and what is member-only
The current reading, the percentile and the full historical record are free. The most recent days of data are reserved for members, because that is the part that tells you what the indicator is doing right now rather than what it did years ago.
Members see every observation through the latest release, the same chart without the mask, and the same numbers on every indicator page. Nothing on this site is intraday.
Distribution since 1962
Each row is the share of historical observations at or below that level. A reading in the 90th percentile is higher than nine tenths of the record.
Important
Not investment advice. This page is published for information and education only. It is not a recommendation, solicitation, or offer to buy or sell any security. Market data may be delayed, incomplete, or revised. Indicators describe the past; they do not forecast returns. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Do your own research or consult a licensed financial professional before acting on anything you read here.
Questions
Is the 10-year yield a forecast of inflation?
Only partly. It contains inflation expectations plus a term premium plus expectations for the path of short rates. The breakeven series isolates the inflation component by subtracting the TIPS real yield.
Why is my mortgage rate higher than this?
A mortgage adds credit and prepayment risk, servicing costs and a spread. The gap between the 30-year mortgage and the 10-year note has historically run between one and three percentage points.
How often is this updated?
Once a day after the Treasury publishes its constant-maturity rates, normally in the late afternoon U.S. Eastern time. Weekends and holidays carry the previous session's observation.
Why is the newest stretch of chart locked?
The current reading and the full history are free. The most recent sessions are part of the member plan, which is what funds the data pipeline.