Ominous bond trades point to much higher rates

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Options Action
Ominous bond trades point to much higher rates

Published Mon, May 18 2026 7:41 AM EDT
Oliver Renick
@OJRenick


Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange on May 13, 2026.
NYSE

Options action ignited in products linked to the U.S. bond market Friday as Treasury yields surged to the highest in over a year for the 10-year and 30-year interest rates.

More than three times the past month's average daily volume traded in the long-term Treasury fund, the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) on Friday, with a heavy bias towards put contracts positioning for lower prices and higher yields. Of the 1.4 million contracts traded, almost 380,000 were puts exchanged at the ask or above, indicating they were likely purchased. By comparison, under 240,000 calls were bought.

{snip}

[progree]

1. Here's a page on Treasury yields with a column for change over the past month and past year

https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bonds/us

The Treasury Yields section is at the top right.

As is often the case, they don't explain anywhere what's in the "1 month" and "1 Year" columns, but comparing to what I see in other bond pages, they are the change in yield in basis points (100 basis points = 1 percentage point. So for example an increase of "12" basis points is an increase of 0.12 percentage points. Just move the decimal point 2 places to the left ).

So actually the yields on the 3-month have FALLEN in the past month and in the past year. Ditto the 6-month and 12-month Treasuries over the past year (but their yields are up over the past 12 months).

Everything else has yields up in both the past month and in the past year.

As for "other bond pages", I look at e.g.

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US3M
for the 3-month Treasury

and

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US10Y
for the 10-year Treasury

and other Treasuries have the same URLs, except the "3M" and "10Y" are changed to what's appropriate, e.g. "6M" for the 6-month and "5Y" for the 5-year.