The 30-year Treasury yield is sitting at roughly 4.93% right now, just a hair below the 5% threshold it briefly breached earlier this month for the first time since before the 2008 financial crisis. Whether it stays above that line by December depends, in large part, on something most bond traders don’t typically obsess over: the price of oil.

That’s the takeaway from Bloomberg’s Markets Pulse survey, conducted between May 28 and June 3, which polled 124 market participants on where they see long-term yields heading.

A market divided into thirds

One-third of respondents predict 30-year yields will exceed 5% by the end of 2026. Their conviction comes with a condition: Brent crude needs to stay above $90 per barrel. Another third expects the opposite, forecasting yields to fall back below 5% alongside declining oil prices.

The survey also found that 45% of participants expect the Federal Reserve to make zero changes to monetary policy for the remainder of 2026. No hikes. No cuts.

Fed funds futures, as of the survey period, were pricing in a roughly 60% chance of one rate hike by December 2026. So while nearly half of survey respondents see the Fed doing nothing, the futures market is leaning toward the possibility that the next move is actually tighter, not looser.

The easing cycle that backfired

Since the Federal Reserve began cutting rates in late 2024, 30-year Treasury yields have risen by nearly a full percentage point. That kind of divergence between short-term policy rates and long-term market rates hasn’t happened at this scale during an easing cycle since at least the 1980s.

The 30-year yield’s brief excursion above 5% earlier this month marked the first time it had reached that level since before the global financial crisis.

What this means for investors

At the 5% level, a 30-year Treasury offers a risk-free return that competes meaningfully with equities. The historical average annual return of the S&P 500 hovers around 10% before inflation, but with considerably more volatility.

The survey’s division into near-equal camps also tells us something about the current moment: conviction is low. When a third of market professionals think yields go up, a third think they go down, and the rest aren’t sure, it suggests the range of plausible outcomes is unusually wide.