Seventy years of it
Four rates a municipal buyer is really choosing between, monthly, from 1953. Each point is the last real observation of its month — never an average, because an average of a rate is a number nobody was ever quoted.
The municipal line stops in 2016. That is not a gap in the chart, it is the end of the series: the Bond Buyer 20-Bond GO Index was discontinued on 6 October 2016. Nothing has been drawn across the gap. More on that.
| Series | From | To | Months | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 year | 1962-01 | 2026-09 | 777 | 4.77% |
| Bond Buyer 20-Bond GO Index | 1953-01 | 2016-10 | 766 | 3.20% |
| Moody's Aaa corporate | 1983-01 | 2026-09 | 525 | 5.92% |
| Federal funds (effective, monthly) | 1954-07 | 2026-08 | 866 | 3.63% |
How often the curve inverted
The 10-year has yielded less than the 2-year on 2,049 trading days since 1976, most recently 5 September 2024. An inversion is the market paying more for two years of certainty than for ten.