Treasury Snapshot: Yields And 30-Year Fixed Mortgage At Interim Highs

: I've updated the charts below through Thursday's close. The yield on the 10-year note ended the day at 2.90%, a new interim closing high from its historic low of 1.43% on July 25th of last year. That's a 103% increase.

The latest Freddie Mac Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey, published Thursday, puts the 30-year fixed at 4.58%, the highest since mid-June of 2011 and 127 bps above its all-time low of 3.31% in late November of last year. That's a 38% increase in the mortgage rate.

Here is a snapshot of the 10-year yield and the 30-year fixed 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.

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. Now that consenus is that QE tapering will begin perhaps as early as next month, it will be especially interesting to see if investors -- here and abroad -- will continue to sell Treasuries, as reflected in the rising yields.

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.