CREDIT : Bond Prices Close Mixed; Trading Slow

Bond prices finished narrowly mixed Monday in listless trading as the market awaited a new report on the strength of the economy.

The Treasury’s 30-year bond fell 1/16 point, or less than $1 for every $1,000 in face value, as its yield held steady at 8.99%.

Trading was described as very light.

The government plans to release an estimate today of first-quarter growth in the gross national product.

Most economists expect that the report will show that growth has slowed to the 2% to 2.5% range since the fourth quarter of 1987, when GNP rose 4.8%.

The report is expected to provide some indication on whether inflation is accelerating and if credit demands are likely to rise because of depletion of inventories.

Inflation erodes bond prices, and a low level of inventories could indicate that credit demands may be poised to accelerate, another development that could hurt bond prices.

Secondary Issues Mixed

In the secondary market for Treasury bonds, prices of short-term governments finished unchanged, intermediate maturities were mixed, with some up 1/16 point, and others off 1/32 point. Twenty-year issues rose 1/32 point, according to the financial information service Telerate Inc.

The movement of a point is equivalent to a change of $10 in the price of a $1,000 bond.

The Merrill Lynch daily Treasury index, which measures price movements on all outstanding Treasury issues with maturities of a year or longer, rose 0.03 to 110.63. The Shearson Lehman composite index, which makes a similar measurement, rose 0.03 to 1,157.34.

In the tax-exempt market, prices of municipal bonds rose 6/32 point in slow trading.

Yields on three-month Treasury bills rose 4 basis points to 5.86%. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Six-month bills were unchanged at 6.25%, and one-year bills rose 2 basis points to 6.58%.

The federal funds rate, the interest on overnight loans between banks, traded at 6.875%, up from 6.813% late Friday.

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