Data as of Aug 21, 2026.

Two numbers explain most of this page. The Treasury yield is what you are paid purely for waiting, because the US government is assumed to pay. Everything above it is what you are paid for taking some other risk — that a company defaults, that a homeowner refinances, that a currency falls.

Yield in percent per year on the vertical axis; maturity on the horizontal axis, spaced on a square-root scale so the one-month to one-year points stay readable next to the thirty-year one. Every point is a constant-maturity yield from the US Treasury via FRED — an interpolated benchmark rather than the price of any single bond you could buy. No bill discount rates are plotted here.

How to read the table below. Each row is one maturity, and the Latest column is the benchmark yield for lending the government money for that long, per year and before tax — a market level rather than the price of a particular bond you could buy at that exact number. The Basis column is the one that catches people out: it names the convention the number is quoted on, and two rows quoted on different conventions are two different measurements rather than a market move. The Observed column is the day the figure was published — if it says NOT CURRENT, the series is overdue and the number in the row is the last one published, not today's.

The 10-year TIPS real yield is deliberately absent from this curve: it is quoted after inflation and belongs on the inflation-protected page rather than on a line of nominal yields.

Read this table top to bottom and you are reading the credit ladder. AAA borrowers pay least. BBB is the lowest rung still called investment grade. Below that, the yield rises because the chance of not being paid rises with it.

The numbers in this table are not rates and nothing pays them to you. A spread is the gap between two yields, written in percentage points: it is how much more a category of borrower is charged than the government is for the same maturity, and it is already inside the corporate yields shown further up the page rather than being paid on top of them. Reading one of these as if it were a yield is the mistake this table exists to prevent, which is why the value column prints pts and not a percent sign.

One row is one fund. The yield column looks backwards: it is the cash the fund has already handed out over the past year divided by what a share costs today, so it is a record of what was paid rather than a rate anything has promised. Two things would mislead a reader comparing this column with the tables higher up the page. It is measured on a different basis from a Treasury yield or an index yield, so the columns are not rankable against each other. And a fund has no maturity date, so there is no day on which you are handed your money back at a fixed price — the only exit is the price on the screen.

Every card below is the same contract — someone borrows, pays interest on a schedule and repays at the end — with a different borrower behind it. What changes from family to family is who can fail to pay you, whether the loan can be handed back early, and how much of the interest survives tax. Each page opens with those three answers, so read the family before reading any yield attached to it.