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(Bloomberg) — Can’t decide where Treasuries are going? The market’s recent performance shows it could go either way.
U.S. government securities have swung between gains and losses for five weeks, reflecting uneven growth and Federal Reserve officials who are sending conflicting signals on when they may raise interest rates. Bond yields suggest investors are bracing for a pickup in inflation that never seems to come.

“The economic indicators are temporarily up and down,” said Hiroki Shimazu, the senior market economist at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. in Tokyo. “The market is confused about Fed policy.”

Benchmark U.S. 10-year yields were little changed at 1.91 percent as of 10:36 a.m. in Tokyo. The price of the 2 percent note due in February 2025 was 100 26/32, based on Bloomberg Bond Trader data.

U.S. employers added more than 200,000 jobs in both January and February before the figure dropped to 126,000 in March. Growth in gross domestic product probably slowed in the first quarter, based on a Bloomberg survey of economists before the report April 29.

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said this month that the U.S. economy isn’t ready for an interest-rate increase.
Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, speaking on CNBC, said on April 16 markets can’t depend on the Fed staying on hold forever.
Based on a metric known as the break-even rate, traders see inflation averaging 1.7 percent a year in the next five years. That’s a half-percentage point higher than the gauge was showing at the end of 2014.
The Fed’s preferred gauge of costs shows the current figure is just 0.3 percent.
Until a trend emerges, flipping a coin may well be the best way to bet on the world’s biggest bond market for now.

To contact the reporter on this story: Wes Goodman in Singapore at wgoodman@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Garfield Reynolds at greynolds1@bloomberg.net Tomoko Yamazaki, Nicholas Reynolds