A 10-Year Treasury Note Bought in 2022 Is Still Down 5.9%. Here Is the One Number That Explains Why.

Walter bought a 10-year Treasury note in January 2022. He was 58, eighteen months from retirement, and a financial podcast had convinced him that Treasuries were the safe half of his portfolio, the part that would not move much. He checked his brokerage statement this September, out of habit more than concern, and the number surprised him: the note is worth less today than he paid for it, four years and eight months later, even after every interest payment he has collected along the way. (Walter is a composite, built to show a typical outcome; the numbers around him are real.)

That is not a glitch and not bad luck. It is a specific, calculable mechanism, and understanding it explains something that matters right now: why a 10-year Treasury bought today, at 5.11%, is not exposed to the same risk a 10-year Treasury bought in January 2022 was, even though both are the same kind of security.

What actually happened to the 2022 buyer

In January 2022, the 10-year Treasury yielded 1.79%, per FRED's DGS10 series. A note bought that month paid that rate for the life of the bond. Then yields rose, fast: to 3.9% by the end of 2022, past 4.5% through 2023, and to 5.11% as of September 23, 2026.

Rising yields make an existing bond's fixed, lower coupon worth less to a new buyer, so its resale price falls. SwitchWize tracked what actually happened to Walter's note: its price, plus every coupon payment reinvested at the prevailing 3-month Treasury bill rate each month, as a single cumulative total return.

Cumulative total return, price plus reinvested coupons, on a 10-year and a 2-year Treasury note both bought in January 2022. Source: SwitchWize calculation from FRED (DGS10, DGS2, DTB3).

The total return bottomed near -18% in October 2023, when the 10-year yield peaked near 4.9%, and has recovered only partway since. As of September 2026, the note is still down 5.9%, 56 months after Walter bought it. A 30-year bought the same month is down 33.4%. Over the identical stretch, someone who simply rolled 3-month Treasury bills, never locking in a rate, earned 20.4%.

SwitchWize calculation: standard semiannual bond pricing, monthly coupon accrual reinvested at the prior month's 3-month T-bill rate, remaining maturity marked to the current yield each month.

The shorter notes recovered because their income resets faster relative to how much price risk they carry. The 10-year and 30-year have not, and this is the part most explanations skip: it is not really about how long the bond is. It is about how much income that bond's specific coupon provides relative to the size of the price swing a rate change can cause.

The one number: the coupon cushion

Every bond has an income cushion, the amount its annual coupon can absorb in rising yields before a year's interest stops covering the resulting price loss. It is calculable directly: reprice the bond at successively higher yields until the year's total return crosses zero.

In January 2022, a 10-year note's coupon of 1.79% gave it a cushion of about 22 basis points, meaning yields could rise by roughly a fifth of a percentage point in a year before that year showed a loss. Yields did not rise by 22 basis points. They rose by 3.09 percentage points over the following 21 months. The cushion was overwhelmed by roughly 14 times over.

A 30-year bond's cushion in January 2022 was even thinner: about 10 basis points, because a longer bond's price moves more for the same change in yield. Its 3.18-point rise by October 2023 was more than 30 times its cushion. That mismatch, a small cushion against a large move, is the entire mechanism behind the 30-year's steeper 33.4% loss.

A 10-year note bought today, at 5.11%, has a cushion of about 74 basis points, more than three times January 2022's. A 30-year at 5.40% has a cushion of about 39 basis points, also nearly four times its 2022 counterpart. Neither makes a future loss impossible. Both mean that whatever rise does happen has to be proportionally larger to produce the same size of loss that 2022's buyers experienced, because there is more income standing in front of it.

Why the cushion was so thin in 2022, and isn't now

The mechanism is not really about the calendar year 2022. It is about how low the starting yield was. The 10-year Treasury spent most of 2020 and 2021 below 1.5%, a level that had briefly been below 1% during the pandemic's early months, according to FRED's DGS10 history. A note issued near the bottom of a multi-decade low in rates was, by construction, going to have almost no income to protect it if rates ever normalized, and 2022's inflation surge forced exactly that normalization within a single year.

That is a different starting condition from today. The 10-year Treasury has spent this year in the 4.9% to 5.4% range, not scraping a multi-decade floor. A note bought now is not betting that rates stay near an unusually low level; it is already priced for a world where 5% is normal, which is precisely why it carries more than three times the income cushion a 2022 note did.

The honest complication

None of this promises a 10-year note bought today will be profitable in three or five years. The 30-year's cushion, even now, is thinner than the 10-year's, and a large enough move, a 1994-style spike or a renewed inflation surge, could still produce a loss for either. SwitchWize's earlier analysis of seven historical episodes since 1966 found that locking in after a sharp yield rise won three times out of seven over the following three years, not every time, and the losses came specifically when inflation kept climbing.

What this piece adds is narrower and more mechanical: whatever happens to yields from here, the size of loss it would take to replicate 2022's outcome is much larger today than it was for a 2022 buyer, because the coupon standing between the buyer and a loss is three to four times larger. A cushion is not a guarantee. It is a measurable amount of room, and today's room is real.

What this means if you are holding a low-coupon note now

If you bought a Treasury note or bond in 2020, 2021, or early 2022 and are looking at a loss on paper, the loss is real only if you sell before maturity. Held to the original maturity date, the note still repays its full face value, coupon payments as promised, regardless of what happened to its price in between. Selling early to "get out" locks in the loss the price chart shows; holding it out does not.

For money you are investing today, the practical takeaway is to know your own cushion before buying, not to buy or avoid based on maturity length alone:

1. Check the coupon-to-cushion math before locking in a long maturity. A note near a multi-decade low in yields, the way 2020 and 2021 notes were, carries structurally less protection than one bought when yields are already elevated.
2. A longer maturity always means a thinner cushion at the same starting yield. The 30-year's 39 basis-point cushion today is roughly half the 10-year's 74, which is the same relationship that made 2022's 30-year losses almost twice the 10-year's.
3. Match the maturity to when you actually need the money, the same rule SwitchWize's duration guide covers in more depth. A note held to its own maturity date never has to realize the price swings in between.

Walter is not selling. He worked out that his note matures in about five and a half years, well after he expects to need that specific money, and the 1.79% coupon, low as it looks now, still pays him exactly what it promised on the day he bought it. What he changed is what he buys next: the CD he is renewing this month is going into a new 10-year Treasury note instead, one priced at 5.11% with three times the cushion his 2022 purchase had.

Quick answers

Is a 10-year Treasury bought in 2022 still down? Yes, about 5.9% as of September 2026, even with coupons reinvested. A 30-year from the same month is down 33.4%.

Why did it lose money if Treasuries are considered safe? Its coupon was too low, 1.79%, to absorb the 3.09-point rise in yields that followed. The bond itself never missed a payment; its resale price simply fell because new bonds offered more income.

Is a Treasury note bought today at 5.11% exposed to the same risk? Less so. Its cushion, the yield rise it can absorb in a year before a loss, is about 74 basis points, more than three times January 2022's 22 basis points, because today's starting coupon is already much higher.