The yield curve is a graph that plots the yields of U.S. Treasury securities against their maturities, from the shortest (1-month bills) to the longest (30-year bonds). It represents the term structure of interest rates at a single point in time.
A normal yield curve slopes upward: longer maturities pay higher yields to compensate investors for the additional risk of holding debt over a longer horizon. This extra compensation reflects both interest rate risk (duration) and uncertainty about future economic conditions.
The shape of the curve encodes the market's collective expectations for growth, inflation, and monetary policy. Three principal components describe its behavior:
The U.S. Treasury yield curve is the global benchmark for risk-free rates. It serves as the foundation for pricing corporate bonds, mortgages, interest rate swaps, and virtually all fixed-income instruments.
Traders and economists monitor the curve continuously because changes in its shape often precede shifts in the economic cycle. A flattening or inverting curve has historically signaled slowing growth or recession, while a steepening curve often signals recovery or expectations of easier monetary policy.
A normal curve slopes upward from short to long maturities, reflecting compensation for the extra interest rate and inflation risk that bondholders bear over longer horizons. Historically the U.S. Treasury curve has been upward-sloping the majority of the time, with the 2s10s spread typically between 0 and +250 basis points outside of recessionary or near-recessionary periods.
An inverted curve has long-maturity yields below short-maturity yields. It signals that the market expects the Federal Reserve to cut short-term rates in the future, usually because growth is slowing. Inversion of the 2s10s spread and the 3m10y spread has preceded every U.S. recession since the late 1970s, though the lag from inversion to recession has varied widely.
The /curves page plots the most recent Treasury par yield curve across the standard set of tenors from 1 month to 30 years and lets you overlay a comparison curve from any historical date. The /forwards page derives the implied forward curve at user-selected horizons from the spot curve.