Bonds Head Into a Historically Difficult October
September 2026 saw the 10-year Treasury yield rise from 4.76% to 5.26%, an increase of 10.45% in a single month. In October, the same yield has risen in 9 out of the past 10 years, with an average increase of +7.47%. Long-term Treasuries, which lost as much as 7.01% in September, have historically ended October lower in 7 or 8 years out of 10. Let’s take a look at what the past 10 years tell us about October performance across yields, bonds, the dollar, gold, crypto, equities, and oil.
September, as we also highlighted in our monthly statistics, was marked by a strong sell-off in the bond market. As mentioned in the introduction, the 10-year Treasury yield rose 10.45%, while the 30-year yield increased 6.57%. The bond volatility index, which measures expected fluctuations in Treasury prices, rose 41.53%. In price terms, long-term Treasuries lost 4.83% (20 years and longer), 7.01% (zero-coupon), and 3.20% (7–10 years). Gold and silver fell 6.73% and 8.39%, respectively, while the dollar rose 1.95%. Bitcoin gained 6.31% and Brent crude 13.37%.
Among equities, the Nasdaq 100 rose 2.95% and semiconductors gained 9.03%. The S&P 500 (−0.37%), Dow Jones (−3.45%), and small-cap stocks (−4.83%) all ended lower. Eight of the eleven S&P 500 sectors declined.
But what does the history of the past 10 years tell us about financial markets, and what kind of October might we expect?
Yields and bonds
The 10-year Treasury yield rose in 9 out of 10 years. The average increase was +7.47% and the median +4.99%, with a range from −1.13% to +27.03%. The changes reported are percentages of the yield level, so a yield moving from 4.76% to 5.11% represents an increase of approximately 7.5%. The 30-year yield rose in 8 out of 10 years, with an average increase of +5.15% and a median of +6.51%. Both series are statistically significant, meaning that the observed regularity is difficult to attribute to chance alone.
Treasury prices, of course, move in the opposite direction to yields.
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The data run through September 29, and through September 28 for cryptocurrencies and some European assets. The changes are measured from the August 31 close.