Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is seeking to cap rising yields using a variety of tools at his department’s disposal. However, traders on prediction market platforms think these moves won’t lead yields to fall dramatically.

Traders on Kalshi think there’s a 56% chance that the 10-year Treasury note yield will end 2026 above or at 4.75%, though they also place just 27% odds that it finishes the year above 5%. As of midday trading Monday, the 10-year yield was trading at about 4.7%.

Traders on Kalshi are asked across a series of contracts about where they think the 10-year Treasury note yield will trade on Dec. 31. The contracts are resolved using data from the U.S. Treasury.

Volume on the contracts are low, though, at just over $16,500 traded.

On Polymarket, speculators place 2-in-3 odds that the 10-year Treasury note yield will cross 4.8% at some point in 2026, a level that it hasn’t breached even amid a recent bonds sell-off. The contracts on Polymarket are also resolved using official data from the U.S. Treasury. 

Last week, global bonds experienced a sell-off as markets assessed the risk of potentially higher inflation while the U.S.-Iran conflict remains unresolved. U.S. national debt also crossed $40 trillion last week, putting further pressure on domestic yields. 

In response to the sell-off, the Treasury Department announced it would double buybacks of U.S. debt to stabilize the bond market. Yields initially fell on the news, then rose again in the days after the announcement. 

On Monday, CNBC reported that the Treasury may consider using its $1 trillion General Account to help fund its increased buybacks, according to senior officials. 

Yields, again, declined after the report. But prediction market traders are betting that, once more, yields’ fall will be temporary and they’ll resume marching higher. 

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.

Iran thinks it can get the Strait of Hormuz to its prewar status within one month of a peace deal with the U.S. Traders on prediction market platform Kalshi are more skeptical. 

They place just a 38% chance that traffic flows through the strait will return to normal by July 1. The contract defines normal flows as the seven-day moving average of transit through the strait crossing 60 based on data from IMF PortWatch.

That level, though, is higher than the roughly 32% chance that traders gave of that happening before the new reports Wednesday.

Reuters cited Iranian state television, which said it had a draft framework of a memorandum of understanding with the U.S., where the detail was learned. The White House denied the existence of any framework with Iran. 

Traders are more confident that flows will return to normal by Aug. 1. They put 60% odds on it happening, higher than the 50-50 chance they had before the reports.

However, all of these odds are lower than chances traders had over the weekend, when there appeared to be a potential imminent announcement of a deal between the two countries. Odds that traffic in the strait returned to normal by July were as high as 50% on Sunday.

Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a commercial relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.

Defense and geopolitical experts are skeptical that “Project Freedom,” the Trump administration’s new effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, will succeed.

“In my view, it’s not a solution at all,” Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a libertarian-leaning foreign policy think tank, said of the operation.

“It doesn’t really address the underlying problem here, which is that the uncertainty about the safety of transit means that ship captains and shipping companies are hesitant to take the risk,” Kavanagh said in a phone interview.

The administration, however, says its day-old effort to defend ships transiting the strait from Iranian attacks is already working.

“We’ve now opened a passage through the Strait of Hormuz to allow for the free flow of commerce to proceed,” U.S. Central Command leader Adm. Brad Cooper said Monday, just hours after Project Freedom commenced.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that two U.S. commercial ships, accompanied by American destroyers, “have already safely transited the strait, showing the lane is clear.”

“We know the Iranians are embarrassed by this fact,” he boasted. “They said they control the strait. They do not.”

The administration hasn’t put a price tag or timeline on the new mission, though Hegseth said it will be “focused in scope and temporary in duration.”

Analysts who spoke with CNBC questioned whether the operation offers either a short-term or long-term solution to the chokepoint in the strait, the top global oil pathway that is at the center of the ongoing conflict with Iran. Pre-war, the narrow waterway saw 20% of the world’s oil transit through it leaving the Persian Gulf.

The defensive operation, they say, doesn’t sufficiently address or inhibit Iran’s ability to threaten vessels attempting to transit the strait, and so the journey remains too risky for most to attempt.

It could also further fray relations with Iran, leading to increased aggression and prolonging any diplomatic agreement, which may be the only way to return commercial traffic in the strait to pre-war levels.

“Project Freedom is unlikely to be a completely decisive solution to Gulf maritime insecurity, but rather a limited, high‑risk deterrence experiment,” Jack Kennedy, head of Middle East and North Africa country risk at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said in an email.

President Donald Trump announced the operation in a Truth Social post Sunday evening, saying the U.S. has assured countries whose vessels are stuck due to the war that it will “guide their Ships safely out of these restricted Waterways.”

CENTCOM said the U.S. military will deploy “guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members” to support Project Freedom.

The mission is…

The Trump administration views the proposed $72 billion deal for Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery‘s film and streaming assets with “heavy skepticism,” a senior administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday morning.

Netflix said Friday that it would acquire Warner Bros.’s film studio and streaming service, HBO Max.

Paramount Skydance had made multiple bids for all of WBD.

The New York Post on Thursday reported that, “Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison met with Trump officials and key lawmakers in Washington DC on Wednesday to press his case against Warner Bros. Discovery’s potential selection of Netflix as its merger partner.”

Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, is close to President Donald Trump.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount, in a letter to lawyers for WBD, had warned that a sale to Netflix likely would “never close” because of regulatory challenges both in the United States and overseas.

“Acquiring Warner’s streaming and studio assets ‘will entrench and extend
Netflix’s global dominance in a matter not allowed by domestic or foreign competition laws,’ Paramount’s lawyers wrote,” the Journal reported.

Correction: A senior administration official said the Trump administration views the deal with ‘heavy skepticism.’ A previous version mischaracterized the official.