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Long bond yields reach multi-decade highs as the selloff spreads

Treasury, European and Japanese government bond yields all climbed, and the US 30-year mortgage rate posted its largest weekly rise in four years.

Assembled by Claude from 12 sources at 10 outlets · Saturday, October 3, 2026, Morning edition, 10:25 AM EDT · no human byline

Disclosure. This item was assembled by an AI from the RSS excerpts of the outlets tagged inline. No human wrote or checked it before publication. Feed selection and categories are editorial choices by Teresa Lo. Nothing here is investment advice.

What happened

US Treasury daily par yield curve data shows the 10-year yield rising from 4.78% on September 4 to 5.29% on September 30 webdisclosure.com. Tekedia reported the global bond rout deepening with the US 10-year hitting 5.34% tekedia.com. A weekly market summary described yields across short and long tenors as anchored near 20-year highs after weeks of heavy selling finance.yahoo.com. BusinessToday Malaysia reported Treasury yields easing only after the 10-year hit its highest level since 2002 businesstoday.com.my. AllianceBernstein wrote that yields on long bonds have risen to multi-decade levels alliancebernstein.com.

Why it matters to investors

The repricing is reaching households. The weekly average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 7.28% as of Thursday, Freddie Mac reported, up 0.25 points from the previous week and 0.94 points from a year earlier axios.com. The Wall Street Journal called it the largest weekly increase in four years and tied the move to the bond-market rout wsj.com. Axios noted that mortgage rates closely track 10-year Treasury yields, which have risen by over 1.25 percentage points since the start of the Iran war in February axios.com. Mortgage applications are plunging, which Axios said risks deepening the freeze in a housing market already slowed by thin inventory axios.com.

Fund investors have taken the other side of the same move. Morningstar reported that fixed-income markets swooned in the third quarter as a surge in interest rates across the Treasury yield curve drove bond prices down morningstar.com. The same move that cut bond prices lifted the cost of a mortgage by roughly a quarter of a point in a single week, which is the transmission channel to watch axios.comwsj.com.

What to watch

The Journal's view is that oil prices are driving rates higher but government indebtedness is a key risk factor behind the global selloff wsj.comwsj.com. In Europe, UK, Greek and Italian yields climbed while France remained at the epicentre of the storm after a proposed budget failed to quell investors' anxiety semafor.com. In Japan, the 30-year yield rose to 4.21% and the 40-year to 4.275%, while the 2-year eased to 1.92% and the 5-year to 2.365%, steepening the curve finimize.com.

AllianceBernstein frames the choice ahead as one between a bond market crisis and yield curve control alliancebernstein.com. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said further rate increases would likely be needed to restrain the economy going into 2027 businesstoday.com.my. Those two positions mark out the range for long rates from here alliancebernstein.combusinesstoday.com.my.

Sources

  1. wsj.com: Heard on the Street: High government debt is adding fuel to the global bond market selloff (2026-10-02)
  2. wsj.com: High Government Debt Is Adding Fuel to the Global Bond -Market Selloff - WSJ (2026-10-02)
  3. wsj.com: Mortgage rates posted their largest increase in four years this week (2026-10-01)
  4. axios.com: Mortgage rates approach 3-year high as new applications plunge (2026-10-01)
  5. semafor.com: Fears of European debt crisis send bond yields soaring (2026-10-02)
  6. webdisclosure.com: YieldStack Publishes DSCR Coverage Check After September Treasury Rise (2026-10-03)
  7. tekedia.com: Global Bond Rout Deepens as US 10-Year Yield Hits 5.34%, While Micron Keeps AI Stocks Resilient (2026-10-02)
  8. finance.yahoo.com: The Stocktwits Weekly Spread: What Shaped Yields And The Dollar This Week - Yahoo Finance (2026-10-03)
  9. finimize.com: Japan's Long-Term Bond Yields Hit Multi-Decade Highs - Finimize (2026-10-02)
  10. alliancebernstein.com: An Invidious Choice? Towards Bond Market Crisis or Yield Curve Control | AB (2026-10-02)
  11. morningstar.com: How Bond Funds Performed in Q3 2026 - Morningstar (2026-10-02)
  12. businesstoday.com.my: Treasury Yields Ease After 10-Year Hits 2002 High - BusinessToday Malaysia (2026-10-02)