Global Bond Yields Rise Amid Expectations of More Rate Rises — Update

By Miriam Mukuru and Emese Bartha

Global bond yields rose on Friday, hovering below multiyear highs, after the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan raised interest rates this week, with more increases expected to come.

The Fed raised interest rates by a quarter point on Wednesday, and signaled another raise to come this year, which convinced markets about the seriousness of the Fed's inflation fight.

This helped pull yields away from recent highs. However, the factors that drove bond yields higher in the first place remained, namely the risk of oil prices staying elevated for a prolonged period, high debt levels, and competition for funding from AI-related companies.

"The Fed may have reinforced its inflation-fighting credentials, but heavy government borrowing, elevated term premium and growing private-sector competition for capital mean long yields remain supported by forces that monetary policy alone cannot easily resolve," said Daniela Hathorn, senior market analyst at Capital.com.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose 3.7 basis points to 4.984%, reversing earlier falls. Earlier this week, the yield breached the psychological 5% barrier to hit 5.041%, the highest since 2007, Tradeweb data showed.

The Bank of Japan also raised its policy rate to 1.25% on Friday, the highest since 1995, albeit in a split vote. The Bank of England's decision to hold rates and to stop the sale of long-dated gilts relieved markets and pushed gilt yields lower on Thursday. This followed a rate rise last week by the European Central Bank.

With the possibility of more rate increases to come, analysts warned that yields could still rise further.

"The global rebuilding of term premia is not yet complete, and markets still have scope to price a more aggressive path of central bank rate hikes," Societe Generale rates strategists said in a note.

The 10-year German Bund yield rose 2.0 basis points to 3.500%, below a peak of 3.572% hit earlier this week, its highest since 2009. The 10-year U.K. gilt yield climbed 5.7 bps to 5.275%, below this week's peak of 5.493%, its highest since 2007.

The 10-year Japanese government bond yield was steady at 2.998% after the BOJ raised rates but two board members voted against the move, which raised doubts about the pace of further policy changes.

Central bank leaders acknowledged the rising inflation risks and signaled more rate rises in the coming months, causing markets to price in three or more rate increases by major central banks in the next year, LSEG data showed.

"The medicine from the Fed is working and may have prevented the rates selloff from spiraling out of control," said Commerzbank rates strategist Marco Stoeckle in a note.

Falling oil prices also eased inflation concerns and contained the rise in yields. Brent crude prices fell 1.1% to $103.76 a barrel as supply fears fueled by the outage of Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline eased.

Gilt yields were also lifted after Friday's U.K. retail sales data for August came in better than expected, suggesting that household spending stayed resilient despite high energy costs and increased prospects of higher interest rates by the Bank of England in the future.

Write to Miriam Mukuru at miriam.mukuru@wsj.com and Emese Bartha at emese.bartha@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 18, 2026 09:25 ET (13:25 GMT)