The blue line is what a 10-year TIPS guarantees you above inflation. The green line is the breakeven inflation rate, the inflation premium built into regular Treasuries: add the two and you get the nominal 10-year yield. Updated daily from the Treasury's par yield curves.
Loading two decades of daily data…
| Date | Real yield | Breakeven | Implied nominal |
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The real yield is the return a 10-year TIPS locks in on top of whatever inflation turns out to be. When the blue line reads 2.4%, a ladder priced that day guarantees purchasing power growth of 2.4% a year for a decade. That number is the single input that moves the ladder calculator's cost more than any other.
The breakeven is the gap between nominal Treasury yields and real TIPS yields. It is the average annual inflation at which both bonds return the same amount, which makes it the market's working forecast of inflation. Above the breakeven, TIPS win; below it, nominal bonds win.
Three eras stand out. Before 2008, real yields near 2% were ordinary. Then a decade of zero-rate policy pushed them relentlessly down: from 2011 through 2013 and again in 2020 and 2021 the 10-year real yield went negative, bottoming near -1.2% in late 2021. Buyers of TIPS in those years locked in a guaranteed loss of purchasing power and did it anyway, which says something about how scarce inflation protection was.
The 2022 repricing reversed all of it in eighteen months. Real yields climbed four full points from the bottom, and the July 2026 ten-year auction cleared at the highest real yield since October 2008. Whether that persists is anyone's guess, but the chart is why the current window matters: today's buyer locks in what the 2021 buyer paid to avoid.
Breakevens tell a quieter story. Outside the 2008 crash and the brief 2020 panic, the market's decade inflation forecast has stayed remarkably anchored between roughly 1.5% and 3%, even while realized inflation spiked far above it in 2022. TIPS holders collected that difference; nominal holders paid it.
The annual return a 10-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Security guarantees on top of inflation. Whatever CPI inflation turns out to be, the holder earns the real yield above it. The current value is charted above.
The difference between the nominal 10-year Treasury yield and the 10-year TIPS real yield. It is the average annual inflation rate at which both bonds would return the same amount, which makes it the bond market's working forecast of inflation over the next decade. If inflation averages more than the breakeven, TIPS outperform; if less, nominal Treasuries outperform.
Yes. Real yields near 2.4% sit above the vast majority of daily readings since 2003. The 10-year real yield was negative for long stretches of 2011-2013 and 2020-2021, and the July 2026 ten-year TIPS auction cleared at the highest real yield since October 2008. The percentile tile above recomputes the exact ranking daily.
History through 2026 comes from FRED series DFII10 (10-year real yield) and T10YIE (10-year breakeven). New trading days are appended from the U.S. Treasury's daily par real and nominal yield curves, with the breakeven computed as nominal minus real.
The 5-year and 30-year real yields have their own daily charts. Sizing a ladder at today's yields takes thirty seconds in the calculator, and the primer covers when to prefer funds, the tax mechanics, and the auction calendar in depth.