Bonds Meander Around Unchanged as Stock and Oil Prices Rise

Bond prices ended Monday little changed after a mind-numbingly dull session in which there were no market-moving economic indicators and volume was less than half normal.

Tough talk by President Clinton about the Kosovo crisis shortly after 3 p.m. EDT appeared to push the benchmark 30-year Treasury bond's price into positive territory. Concern about a protracted conflict should boost demand for safe, liquid Treasuries, and Clinton, speaking at the White House, said NATO air strikes against Serb targets in Yugoslavia will continue until President Slobodan Milosevic halts hostilities against Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.

But the Treasury bond futures contract traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, where the closing bell rings at 3 p.m., ended the day down 1/32, and in both the futures and the cash markets the tendency over the course of the day was to drift lower, as stocks surged and oil prices tacked on another 25 cents. ...