U.S. government bond yields edged higher Wednesday, with investors weighing new retail-sales data ahead of the conclusion of the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting.

In recent trading, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was 1.445%, according to Tradeweb, compared with 1.437% Tuesday.

Yields, which rise when bond prices fall,...

U.S. government bond yields edged higher Wednesday, with investors weighing new retail-sales data ahead of the conclusion of the Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting.

In recent trading, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was 1.445%, according to Tradeweb, compared with 1.437% Tuesday.

Yields, which rise when bond prices fall, briefly dropped in early-morning trading after the Commerce Department reported that sales at U.S. retail stores, online sellers and restaurants rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in November from the previous month.

That was below the 0.8% increase forecast by economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Sales excluding autos were also less than expected. Typically, weak economic data boosts demand for Treasurys by reducing investors’ expectations for economic growth, inflation and short-term interest-rate increases set by the Fed.

Yields, though, quickly recovered after the report, which was accompanied by better-than-expected data on New York state manufacturing activity. The Fed meeting also loomed over trading, giving investors reason to look past the new economic data.

Investors are looking for a few major outcomes from the meeting. Those include an update on the central bank’s plan to wind down the bond-buying program it started last year to improve market functioning and stimulate the economy following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Fed is currently reducing the size of its purchases by $10 billion in the case of Treasurys and $5 billion in the case of mortgage-backed securities. But many investors expect the Fed to announce a faster wind-down after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell suggested that was possible at a recent Senate hearing.

Investors are also prepared for changes to officials’ interest-rate projections. Many expect that a majority of officials will support multiple rate increases next year. Officials were evenly split in September over whether to raise rates at all before 2023.

The expected turn to tighter monetary policy comes following a surge in inflation that caught many investors and economists off guard. Still, neither inflation nor the prospect of faster rate increases, have done much to push up longer-term Treasury yields, defying the historical pattern.

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Though investors have sold short-term Treasurys in anticipation of rate-increases next year, they have largely kept buying longer-term bonds in the belief that the central bank won’t be able to raise rates very high before slowing the economy and being forced to stop. In recent weeks, the emergence of the Omicron Covid-19 variant has also weighed on economic sentiment, providing a further drag on yields.

As of Wednesday morning, federal-funds futures—derivatives used by traders to bet on the path of interest rates—suggested that investors thought there was an 87% chance that the Fed will raise rates by at least two times, or half a percentage point, next year and a 62% chance it will raise rates at least three times, or three-quarters of a percentage point, according to CME Group data.

“Every other day in December felt like the markets were expecting a more and more hawkish meeting and the bar seems to be set pretty high at this stage,” analysts at NatWest Markets wrote in a note to clients.

Write to Sam Goldfarb at sam.goldfarb@wsj.com