Constant maturity yields estimated by the Treasury Department (data here) felt 14 basis points at the 20-year and 30-year maturity.
Despite the description in the “About Me” box on the right side of the blog, I rarely talk about automation. The graph above is an example of the type of automation I do to help me keep tabs on the economy. My Linux computer runs a bash script everyday to get the constant maturity yield data from the Treasury Department website, and then the script uses Matlab to generate the graph. Finally, it emails me the graph by email. If the change in yield is large, the email adds the words “(LARGE MOVEMENT)” in the email subject.
Today, the yield changes are quite large. The numbers in the title of the graph are the day to day yield change. The top graph plots the yield curve for the past two days. The bottom graph plots the change in a bar graph. The email helps me keep tab on the economy – since large movement in the Treasury yields are usually meaningful. Of course, it is often difficult to pinpoint why.
However, for today at least, I am guessing the drop in yields is related to the Europe situation. Here are the headlines on Bloomberg’s main webpage at the moment (6:00pm October 25, 2011).
Asia Stocks Fall as Europe Uncertainty Grows
Japan Signals Coming Action as Yen Hits Record
Chinese Banks’ Profits May Not Lift Valuations
Amazon Profit Plunges; Shares Tumble
Australia Inflation Slows, Currency Declines
BlackRock Expects “Massive” Mining M&A
IBM Names Ginni Rometty as First Female CEO
Merkel Puts Rescue Fund to German Vote
S. Korea Growth May Slow, Pressuring BOK
Reference: Bloomberg [Bloomberg]