Business and Personal Finance Dictionary

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• YIELD CURVE RISK
  
  The risk to a holder of financial instruments that a change in prevailing interest rates will not affect the prices or yields of the same instruments in exactly equal amounts for each available term. For example, an increase in prevailing interest rates might raise 3-month U.S. Treasury yields by 100 basis points while 6-month U.S. Treasury yields go up by only 85 basis points. (In this example, the change to the yield curve would be described as flattening. If, instead, the 6-month rate had risen by more than the 3-month rate, the change in the yield curve would be described as steepening.) The risk of a nonparallel shift in the yield curve. One of the four primary components of interest rate risk. Sometimes called yield curve twist risk, twist risk, or rotation risk.
  
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