What's New: The daily close yield on the 10-year note has been relatively range-bound since early February, with low of 2.60% on March 3rd and a high of 2.82% on April 2nd, which was the record closing high for the S&P 500. Today's official close is 5 bps above that March low, which was also the lowest close of 1014.

The latest Freddie Mac Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released today, puts the 30-year fixed at 4.34%, 103 bps above its all-time low of 3.31% in late November of 2012 year and 24 bps below its 4.58% interim high reported in August of last year.

The 30-year Treasury closed today at 3.52%.

Here is a snapshot of the 10-year yield and 30-year fixed-rate mortgage since 2008.

A log-scale snapshot of the 10-year yield offers a more accurate view of the relative change over time. Here is a long look since 1965, starting well before the 1973 Oil Embargo that triggered the era of "stagflation" (economic stagnation with inflation). I've drawn a trendline connecting the interim highs following those stagflationary years. The red line starts with the 1987 closing high on the Friday before the notorious Black Monday market crash. The S&P 500 fell 5.16% that Friday and 20.47% on Black Monday.

Here is a long look back, courtesy of a FRED graph, of the Freddie Mac weekly survey on the 30-year fixed mortgage, which began in May of 1976.

A Perspective on Yields Since 2007

The first chart shows the daily performance of several Treasuries and the Fed Funds Rate (FFR) since 2007. The source for the yields is the Daily Treasury Yield Curve Rates from the US Department of the Treasury and the New York Fed's website for the FFR.

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Now let's see the 10-year against the S&P 500 with some notes on Federal Reserve intervention. Fed policy has been a major influence on market behavior.

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For a long-term view of weekly Treasury yields, also focusing on the 10-year, see my Treasury Yields in Perspective, which I update on weekends.