Reply #25: Treasuries nudge up, take heart from factory blip

[54anickel]

http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2004/02/19/rtr1268132.html

NEW YORK, Feb 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasuries crawled into the black on Thursday after data showed regional U.S. manufacturing did not flourish as much as expected in early February, which offset upbeat comments from a Federal Reserve official.

"Obviously, you can see the market is not moving much today day-to-day based on this data. Even volatility indices are extremely low across the board," said Joseph Shatz, government strategist at Merrill Lynch.

"Basically, the market got a lot of very important numbers in the last week or two and it's going to be kind of quiet until (traders) get some more major information that changes their view that the Fed will be on hold for a while," he said.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury <US10YT=RR> rose by 2/32 in price to hold at 4.05 percent on the day.

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