Using Visor · beginner · 4 min

The Yield Curve

The Yield Curve widget draws the US Treasury par yield curve: the yield the market demands for lending to the US government, across eleven maturities from one month to thirty years. Visor plots the official daily curve published by the U.S. Department of the Treasury — public-domain data, updated each business day after the close.

Reading the shape

• Upward-sloping (normal) — longer lending pays more. The market expects growth and positive term premium.
• Flat — short and long rates converge; the market sees the policy rate near its destination.
• Inverted — short rates above long rates. The market expects cuts ahead; historically the famous recession signal, though the lead time varies from months to years.

The 2s10s chip

The chip in the header is the 2s10s spread: the 10-year yield minus the 2-year yield, in percentage points. Positive means a normal curve; negative is an inversion, and the chip says so. It's the single most-watched summary of the whole curve.

Scrubbing history

Drag the slider to move the curve back through roughly a year of business days. The dashed ghost line stays pinned to the latest curve so you can see how today's shape compares with the day you scrubbed to — steepening and flattening become obvious as the gap between the lines opens and closes. The Latest button snaps back to today.

Charting single maturities

Each maturity is also a chartable symbol — US2Y, US10Y, US30Y and the rest chart in the regular Chart widget on daily and weekly intervals, so you can overlay drawings and study a single tenor over time. They quote a level, not a price: 4.57 means 4.57%.

Data: daily par yields, U.S. Department of the Treasury. One value per business day — the widget refreshes on the same daily cadence, not tick by tick.