CREDIT : Pre-Holiday Trading Slow; Bonds Mixed

Bond prices finished narrowly mixed Thursday in trading muted by anticipation of the three-day holiday weekend.

The Treasury’s closely watched 30-year issue edged up 1/8 point, or about $1 for every $1,000 in face value, as its yield slipped to 8.75% from 8.76% late Wednesday.

The credit markets will be closed today in observance of Passover and Good Friday.

Many traders were hesitant about taking a big position in the fixed-income market before today’s scheduled release of unemployment figures for March. With the U.S. markets closed, there would be little chance to unwind those positions until Monday if the numbers turned up a surprise.

The bond market has been closely tracking fluctuations in the dollar, and the dollar moved in a narrow range throughout the session, closing near its opening levels. Bond prices initially moved lower but later recovered.

Index Declines

In the secondary market for Treasury bonds, prices of short-term governments were unchanged; intermediate maturities were mixed with some off 1/32 point and others up 2/32 point, and 20-year issues fell 3/32 point, according to the financial information firm Telerate Inc. The movement of a point is equivalent to a change of $10 in the price of a bond with a $1,000 face value.

The Merrill Lynch daily Treasury index, which measures price movements on all outstanding Treasury issues with maturities of a year or longer, fell 0.06 to 111.64.

Yields on three-month Treasury bills were unchanged at 5.72%. Six-month bills were unchanged at 6.04%, and one-year bills rose 1 basis point to 6.37%. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.

The federal funds rate, the interest on overnight loans between banks, traded at 6.75%, up from 6.675% on Wednesday.