The 10-Year Treasury Yield: 64 Years of Daily Data
The 10-year Treasury yield is the annual return the market demands to lend to the US government for ten years, read from the prices of Treasury notes. It was 5.24% on 1 October 2026, and since 1962 it has run from 0.52% in August 2020 to 15.84% in September 1981.
The 10-year Treasury yield is the interest rate the market sets on ten-year US government debt. It is the benchmark most often quoted for long-term borrowing costs, and the Federal Reserve Board publishes it for every business day in its H.15 release. This page measures it with every daily value since 1962.
How it works
The Treasury sells notes; the market sets the yield. TreasuryDirect, read on 3 October 2026, says Treasury notes are sold for terms of 2, 3, 5, 7 or 10 years and pay a fixed rate of interest every six months until they mature, with the rate fixed at auction. Once a note is issued it trades, and its price moves. The yield is the annual return a buyer at today’s price would earn by holding to maturity.
Price and yield are two views of the same thing. The coupon is fixed in dollars, so when buyers pay less for the note, the same coupons are a larger return on what they paid, and the yield is higher.
The quoted “10-year yield” is a constant-maturity figure. The series used here is DGS10, the market yield on US Treasury securities at 10-year constant maturity, quoted on an investment basis, from the Federal Reserve Board’s H.15 release, as published on FRED. Notes are issued on set dates, so their remaining terms drift; the H.15 notes say constant-maturity yields are interpolated by the US Treasury from its daily yield curve, which gives the yield at exactly ten years.
Why it matters beyond bonds. It is a reference point for long-term borrowing, for valuing stocks against a safer alternative, and for Treasury futures, which are priced from the notes themselves.
A worked example
Take a hypothetical new ten-year note with a 4.000% coupon and $1,000 face value. It pays $20 every six months, 20 payments in all, plus the $1,000 at the end.
If the market yield is 4%, the note is worth $1,000.00. Discounting each payment at 2% a half year gives exactly the face value, because the coupon equals the yield.
If the yield rises to 5%, the same note is worth $922.05, a fall of 7.79%. Nothing about the note changed; buyers now want 5% a year, and the only way a fixed $20 coupon can deliver that is a lower price.
If the yield falls to 3%, it is worth $1,085.84, a rise of 8.58%. The gain is larger than the loss for the same one-point move, which is the curvature described on the bond convexity page.
In 2026 the move was real. The yield started the year at 4.18% (the last 2025 value), touched 3.97% on its low, and stood at 5.24% on 1 October, so a note bought at the start of the year was worth less by autumn.
The original data
Every published daily value of DGS10, 2 January 1962 to 1 October 2026: 16,173 observations, downloaded from FRED on 3 October 2026 and republished here as downloaded.
- First value: 4.06% on 2 January 1962. Latest: 5.24% on 1 October 2026.
- Highest: 15.84% on 30 September 1981. Lowest: 0.52% on 4 August 2020.
- The median of all 16,173 days is 5.39%, and 51.18% of them were at or above the latest 5.24%. By the standard of the whole series, the 1 October level is middling; by the standard of the last 20 years it is high.
- On 30 September 2026 it reached 5.29%, the highest since 14 May 2002. The first 2026 value at or above 5.24% was on 28 September; before that, the last was on 12 June 2007.
Daily moves are small and occasionally large. Across 16,172 day-to-day changes, measured in basis points (hundredths of a percentage point):
- The median move was 3 basis points, and 11.75% of days did not move at all at two decimals.
- 1,696 days (10.49%) moved 10 basis points or more, and 125 moved 25 or more.
- The largest rise was 65 basis points on 19 February 1980; the largest fall, 75 on 20 October 1987.
- 2026 has been quiet by that measure: 6 moves of 10 or more in 189 changes, against 22 in 2024 and 14 in 2025.
Yearly averages tell the long story. The 1981 average was 13.92%; the 2020 average, 0.89%; 2026 so far, 4.47%. The yearly table from 1962 gives each year’s days, average, low, high and last value.
The 10-year and mortgage rates
The 30-year fixed mortgage rate follows the 10-year at a distance. Freddie Mac’s weekly survey, MORTGAGE30US on FRED, runs from 2 April 1971. Pairing each of its 2,897 weekly readings with the 10-year yield on the same day (or the last business day before it):
- The mortgage rate sat a median 167 basis points above the 10-year.
- The gap ran from minus 3 basis points (22 February 1980) to 566 (2 May 1980), both in the rate turmoil of 1980.
- On 1 October 2026 the mortgage rate was 7.28% against 5.24%, a gap of 204 basis points.
- By decade the median gap was 128 basis points in the 1970s (from April 1971), 196 in the 1980s, 142 in the 1990s, 178 in the 2000s, 168 in the 2010s and 233 in the 2020s so far.
Week to week the link is looser. In the 2,507 weeks when both moved, they moved in the same direction 1,497 times (59.71%). The weekly pairs are published. Freddie Mac changed its survey method on 17 November 2022, as FRED’s notes say, so the recent weeks are not built exactly like the early ones.
What moves the 10-year yield
Expected short-term rates. A ten-year loan competes with rolling over short loans for ten years, so the path the market expects for the policy rate feeds straight in; the rate cuts page covers that side.
Expected inflation. A fixed coupon buys less if prices rise faster, so lenders ask for more.
Supply and the extra return for holding long. More issuance and more uncertainty about the future both tend to raise what buyers ask for tying money up for ten years.
Reading the 10-year yield
Quote changes in basis points, not percent. A move from 5.00% to 5.10% is 10 basis points; calling it a 2% rise confuses the reader.
Check the date and source. DGS10 is published with a lag of a business day on FRED; screens that show a live quote may be pricing one particular note, so small differences from the published series are normal.
Compare with the yield curve. The 10-year alone says little about whether short rates are above or below long ones.
When it fails
As a forecast, it is a price, not a prediction. The yield is what buyers accept today; it moved from 15.84% to 0.52% over four decades, and nothing in a single day’s value says where it goes next.
As a mortgage guide, the gap moves. A median of 167 basis points hides a range from minus 3 to 566, so a lower 10-year does not lock in a lower mortgage rate.
As a measure of a bond fund’s return, it misses the price change. A holder of existing notes earns the coupon plus or minus the price change when yields move, as the worked example shows.
As a daily signal, most moves are noise. Half of all days since 1962 moved 3 basis points or less, so a single day’s change says little on its own.
And as a long-run average, the median hides regimes. The 5.39% median of the whole series sits between two very different eras, the double-digit yields of the early 1980s and the sub-2% yields of the 2010s, and neither era’s level says much about the other’s.
Related
The yield curve puts the 10-year beside the other maturities. Treasury futures trade the same notes for later delivery. And the bond market explains where Treasury notes sit among other bonds.
When you read a headline about the 10-year, check the change in basis points against a normal day before you react. A 3-basis-point move is an ordinary day; a 10-point move happens on about one day in ten, and 25 points is rare.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money.