2017.12.0815:18:00UTC+00Treasuries Close Roughly Flat Ahead Of Next Week's Fed Announcement

With traders shrugging off the monthly jobs report, treasuries showed a lack of direction throughout the trading day on Friday.

Bond prices spent the day lingering near the unchanged line before closing slightly lower. Subsequently, the yield on the benchmark ten-year note, which moves opposite of its price, inched up by less than a basis point to 2.383 percent.

The choppy trading on Wall Street comes as traders seemed reluctant to make significant moves ahead of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy announcement next Wednesday.

With the Fed widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point, traders are likely to keep a close eye on the accompanying statement as well as outgoing Fed Chair Janet Yellen's press conference for clues about the outlook for future rate hikes.

Traders did not show much reaction to a report from the Labor Department showing strong than expected job growth in the month of November.

The report said non-farm payroll employment jumped by 228,000 jobs in November after surging up by a revised 244,000 in October.

Economists had expected employment to climb by 200,000 jobs compared to the addition of 261,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month.

The Labor Department also said the unemployment rate came in at 4.1 percent in November, unchanged from October and in line with economist estimates.

Meanwhile, average hourly employee earnings were up by 2.5 percent year-over-year in November, reflecting an acceleration from 2.4 percent in October but below estimates for 2.7 percent growth.

"Interest rates were volatile but little changed in the immediate aftermath of the release, as the unexpected strength of payrolls was offset, to a degree anyway, by weaker-than-expected average hourly earnings," said FTN Financial Chief Economist Chris Low.

He added, "From the Fed's perspective, there is nothing here likely to prevent a rate hike next week, but because a hike was nearly fully priced in anyway, it should not change expectations."

A separate report from the University of Michigan showed an unexpected deterioration in consumer sentiment in the month of December.

The report said the preliminary reading on the consumer sentiment index for December fell to 96.8 from the final November reading of 98.5. Economists had expected the index to inch up to 99.0.

While the Fed announcement is likely to be in the spotlight next week, reports on producer and consumer prices, retail sales, and industrial production may also attract some attention.