The brinkmanship between the U.S. government and the bond market continued on Thursday following the Treasury Department’s announcement the day before that it would double repurchases of longer-dated Treasuries in a bid to lower yields. The

Buybacks Vs. Bond Bears: The High-Stakes Standoff Continues

Aug 21, 2026, 10:50 AM ETUnited States 2-Year Bond Yield (US2Y), US10Y, US30YTLT, TLH, EDV, SPTL, ZROZ, VGLT, LGOV, SCHQ, TFJL, TBJL, GOVZ, TBT, TMV, IEF, SHY, TBF, TMF, PST, TTT, IEI, BIL, TYO, UBT, UST, UTWO, VGSH, SHV, VGIT, GOVT, SCHO, TBX, SCHR, GSY, TYD, VUSTX, SYSB, GBIL, SPTS, VLGSX, PRULX, VEDTX, FBLTX, PEDIX2 Comments

Summary

• The brinkmanship between the U.S. government and the bond market continued on Thursday following the Treasury Department’s announcement the day before that it would double repurchases of longer-dated Treasuries in a bid to lower yields.
• The 2-year yield, widely watched as the market’s outlook for near-term Federal Reserve policy, is relatively insulated from the tug-of-war at the long end of the curve.
• The benchmark 10-year yield, by contrast, continues to trend higher by comparison, though recent sessions show a shift toward range-bound trading.
• The main event for judging Treasury’s success or failure in capping, or even lowering, yields will likely unfold with the 30-year maturity.

James Picerno is the director of analytics at The Milwaukee Co., a wealth manager that is the adviser to The Brinsmere Funds, a pair of global asset allocation ETFs. He also edits CapitalSpectator.com and The US Business Cycle Research Report (CapitalSpectator.com/premium-research). He is the author of three books, including "Quantitative Investment Portfolio Analytics In R: An Introduction To R For Modeling Portfolio Risk and Return." Previously he was a financial journalist at Bloomberg and before that at Dow Jones.