Treasury yield
The annual return an investor earns by holding a US Treasury security to maturity, expressed as a percentage of its price.
A Treasury yield is the annualized return on a US government security if it is held to maturity and all payments are made as scheduled. Yield moves inversely to price: when prices fall, yields rise. The Treasury publishes yields for bills, notes and bonds across maturities, and the ten-year yield is the most widely cited benchmark.
On our site, yields are shown in percent and in basis points, with the maturity labeled. Use the same maturity when comparing series.
Traders care because Treasury yields set the benchmark for mortgage rates, corporate borrowing costs and the discount rate used to value stocks. A rise in yields can pressure equity valuations.
Worked example (illustrative numbers, not real data): a 10-year note with a 4 percent coupon and a 100 dollar face value trades at 95, a yield to maturity of about 4.6 percent. If the price rises to 98, the yield falls to about 4.3 percent.